WHAT THE CHILDREN SAY: The blocks at this pool are slippery. The water is cold.
WHAT MY SON ASKS ME ABOUT WHILE WE’RE DRIVING HOME: Turkey hunting.
WHAT THE WIFE SAYS TO THE SON: No, no more hunting for you.
WHAT I KNOW ABOUT TURKEY HUNTING: Nothing.
WHAT EVERYONE TELLS ME ABOUT TURKEY HUNTING: Turkeys are smart. They know when you are holding a gun. They will walk out in front of you on the road when you are not holding a gun, but the moment you have the gun, they will not appear. You can call them with a turkey call and sometimes that will work. Most turkey calls sound like fingernails running down a chalkboard.
WHAT TED DID AT THE POOL: Took a long flotation device, called a noodle, and floated in the shallow end, slapping it on top of the water. The sound was loud, and Ted liked it. He smiled broadly, showing his wide, white teeth. The sound drew attention to him, though, and the more he slapped the noodle on top of the water, the more people looked at him, and so he slapped the water even harder and faster. The lifeguard looked at Ted and took her hands and, palm down, lowered them a few times, letting Ted know he should calm down.
CALL: Coach has yellow Labradors that he breeds and the puppies need shots.
ACTION: Drove to coach’s house. Noticed the long ramp leading to his front door. The ramp’s wood was blond pine and reminded me of a newly built boardwalk. I pictured Ted wheeling himself up onto it, and the sound of the wheelchair’s wheels making a rhythmic sound like breaking waves as they rolled across the boards and the spaces between them. In the air I thought I could smell the fish and salt smell of the ocean, and the smell of sun-warmed rocks exposed on the white dunes, but when I looked around me of course all there was to see was the mountains, dusted in white snow and the pine trees looking pointy and sharp. I saw the cute sand-colored puppies and I lifted them up and gave them their shots in their skin under the scruffs of their necks.
RESULT: Coach and I talked about the puppies. He would sell them all by the time they were nine weeks old. I looked at coach’s house while we talked. Through an open window I could see Ted sitting inside in his wheelchair. He was looking out at what must have been the mountains, and he was smiling, sitting with his eyes closed and his head lifted, as if he were on the beach himself, taking in the warmth of the sun.
THOUGHTS ON DRIVE HOME: What the hell was that? Realized, quickly, that it was the snow finally sailing off the roof of my truck.
WHAT THE CHILDREN SAID WHEN I GOT HOME: Come on, Poppy. Let’s go to the bank.
RESULT: I drove them, with their pickle jars filled with dollars and coins on their laps, to the bank so they could open their own savings accounts. The teller was patient. There were many pennies to put into piles and count. There were many dog hairs mixed in with the coins that had to be separated, everything smelled faintly of brine, the pickle jars not being washed out so well.
WHAT THE WIFE COOKED FOR DINNER: Gypsy soup she did not have all the ingredients for so she had to rename it Bedouin soup or Nomad soup, whatever the children preferred calling it.
WHAT THE WIFE SAID AT NIGHT IN BED: I can’t move.
WHAT I SAID: Don’t move. I’ll do it all. And I did, taking care not to hurt her back she said she threw out bringing in logs for the woodstove in her office. I made love to her and every time I was just about to enter her, she scooted to the side, the time of the month being bad, or good, depending on how she said she looked at it, or how others looked at it. I was gentle with her, I was tender. I had, just days ago in a fight told her, “The operative word here is Fuck off,” so I felt I owed her a little kindness.
WHAT COACH HAS US DO: Keep ourselves afloat by having our arms raised out of the water and just dolphin kicking. Keep ourselves afloat by just flutter kicking. Keep ourselves afloat with our hands clasped behind our backs and our legs crossed. The last one doesn’t work and all around me in the pool I see people on the team start to sink down, the rubber of their caps disappearing under the water, I see Jen sinking too and then we all start to laugh and we are all choking and what in the world is coach trying to do to us and then I see him on deck raise his hands and laugh and say it was just an experiment he had in mind and I feel we have fallen for the oldest swim coach joke in the world and who knew there was one?
WHAT I SEE ON DECK: Ted sitting in his wheelchair and laughing at us too and clapping his hands together, only both the palms of his hands don’t seem to touch when he claps, and mostly it’s his fingers that meet together, and so his clapping doesn’t make a sound.
Part Four
Spring
CALL: No call, just a voice I heard in the evening. I knew the voice. It was the one I had heard before on the phone. It was the voice like my own. The voice was calling my name. I had just come inside. I had just seen the spacecraft flying over our pond. I opened the door, and in the dying light I could see a young man walking up to our house. I didn’t see his car. I wondered where he had come from. Was Sam’s doctor right? Had the man who had shot my son decided to show up at my door after all? Had this man come from the spacecraft? Was he a spaceman? Was he the pilot? Had our radio beeped him in, had it divulged our location? I wanted to go back into the house, where the children were settling in for the night, brushing their teeth in the bathroom, pulling out footie pajamas from their drawers and arranging hordes of stuffed animals around their pillows on their beds.
WHAT I SAID TO THE SPACEMAN: Hello.
WHAT THE SPACEMAN SAID TO ME: I hope I’m not disturbing you.
WHAT I THOUGHT: We were doing nothing. The wife was starting the dishwasher. I could hear the detergent being squeezed from the bottle. Was the spaceman here to take me up in the spacecraft?
WHAT THE SPACEMAN SAID: My name is Mark Howell. Then the spaceman shook my hand. Even though it was cold outside, the spaceman’s hand was warm. They must have good heating on that spacecraft, I thought to myself. May I come inside? the spaceman said.
WHAT BRUCE AND NELLY DID: Greeted the spaceman like he was one of us. They tried to jump on him. I had to pull them down. They wanted to lick the spaceman’s face. The spaceman didn’t mind Bruce and Nelly. He did not mind their smell or their size or their hair.
WHAT THE SPACEMAN SAID: Well, I made it all the way here. It took me a long time.
WHAT THE WIFE DID: She came to the door, wiping her hands on a dishrag. She looked at me. She looked at the spaceman. I introduced the wife to the spaceman. This is Mark Howell. He has come a long way, I said.
WHAT THE WIFE SAID: Oh, won’t you come inside?
WHAT THE SPACEMAN DID: He stood in our kitchen. He looked around the house. He looked at me. This is it, I thought. This is when the abduction starts. I could hear the children screaming at each other upstairs. They were not going to go to bed quietly. They would be part of the abduction. The spaceman had already heard them. He pointed at the ceiling. Kids? How many? he asked. Three, Jen said. Can I offer you some water or juice?
WHAT THE SPACEMAN SAID: I’m beginning to think that maybe I shouldn’t have come. But the spaceman sat down right after he said that. He sat down in one of our kitchen chairs with a cushion on it. The cushion was not the cleanest thing. The children often dropped their food, and crumbs of it collected in the dimples where the buttons on the cushions were sewn. Jen looked at me, I looked at Jen. We sat down at the table with the spaceman. He ran his palm over the wooden tabletop. It was a table my father had made. The wood was maple. The knots in the wood drove my mother crazy when her eyes started to fail her. She had tried many times with a sponge to rub them out, thinking they were stains from certain foods. The spaceman said he had come from Philadelphia. He had driven straight through without stopping. He had known my name and my address for a while now and it was just recently he decided to come.