WHAT I TOLD THE SPACEMAN: I think you’re very brave to come here and ask me this and I will think about it. Right now, though, we had better drive up to the house and we better see what there is to eat because I’ve forgotten that we didn’t eat. I forgot that we had said we would get something to eat on the road. Are you ready to drive up to the house? I said to the spaceman. He nodded and wiped his eyes and then said mierda, Spanish for shit, because he had lost a contact lens while wiping his eyes and I had to turn the truck light on above our heads so we could find it. It was on his knee the whole time; I saw it winking there like a splash of water. I told him I didn’t know he wore contacts and that I wore them too and that without them I was blind. He said he was also blind without his. I then told him how I could see perfectly without them. I just had to hold whatever I was looking at very close to my eyes. I told him that sometimes my wife made fun of me while I was reading without my contacts and she would push the magazine or whatever I was reading even closer up to my face so that it knocked into my nose. But it was just as easy to make fun of her, I said, because she now needed glasses to read. When she wasn’t wearing them she held the book or whatever she was reading very far away from her. She would stretch her arms out as far away as they could go and sometimes when she leaned over my shoulder to read the same article I was reading, I would hold the article close to my nose and she would try to push it far away and we would fight that way for a while, just trying to read the print.
WHAT WE ATE FOR DINNER: The cold roast.
WHAT SARAH ASKED THE SPACEMAN: Why are your eyes so red? Were you crying? Would you like to hold our rabbit? She can make you feel better.
WHAT I SAID: Sarah, isn’t it your bedtime?
WHAT SARAH SAID: Oh, Dad, Lyle says he knows a boy who eats bugs.
WHEN THE SPACEMAN LEFT: Sometime in the middle of the night. I didn’t hear his car, but I did hear what I thought was the top of the rabbit’s cage being opened. Maybe the spaceman had taken Sarah’s advice after all and was petting the rabbit.
WHAT THE WIFE SAID SHE HEARD: Something whirring outside in the dark, and she thought it might be the spacecraft. I figured it was his electric car.
WHAT I THOUGHT: I would not find out the name of the man who shot my son now. The spaceman is too upset. The spaceman should be upset. I should not bother knowing the name of the man who shot my son when the spaceman is this upset. I don’t really even want to know who shot my son. I am okay not knowing. I can keep going on calls if I do not know. It is a good trade to make. I can keep admiring Dorothy’s sheep and Arlo’s ghost cows if I do not know. I can visit the calm Belgian whose throat I incised so that he could breathe from the plastic handle of a milk jug for the rest of his life. I could visit the woman with the hair so long it always became stuck in the buckles of her horse’s bridle. I could still visit the Zodiac Killer. He is full of advice. I’d like to know what design for a barn he’d suggest. I could still go to Phil’s. I could walk down his well-worn aisles where the floorboards creak and heave and I could stand in front of his glass meat case and I could order sausage he had made himself and bacon he had cured on his own. I could visit Arthur still and listen to the horse’s talk through him and watch the geese land on his pond, their feet out in a pose to brake, their wings not beating, coming down on water flat as glass on a windless day. I could still visit the Mammoth Mules and I could still see the minis, Molly, Netty, Sunny, and Storm. What a good life I have not knowing the name of the man who shot my son.
WHAT THE WIFE SAID WHEN I TOLD HER THE SPACEMAN NEEDED MY KIDNEY: No.
WHAT THE DOCTOR SAID WHEN I CALLED HIM ON THE PHONE: I’m so glad you decided to call. I told him I wanted to schedule a time to talk.
WHAT THE DOCTOR SAID: That’s a wise thing to do.
WHAT I SAID: No, not for me, I mean not for my levels, for my kidney. I’d like a discussion, I said. Is it possible to talk over the phone?
CALL: Jen screaming, telling me there’s a bat in the sink drain. She went into the bathroom to wash her face, and there in the sink was a small bat, nose crammed into the space between the drain and the metal stopper.
ACTION: Called the children to the scene of the emergency. The bat is obviously sick, I said to the children. I sent Sam off to find a plastic container. Tore off a piece of cardboard from a Tampax box and scooped the bat up into a plastic container that Sam brought that once held fancy greens. Told Sarah to fold up toilet paper to put inside the plastic container to keep the bat warm. Sent Sam and Mia off to catch flies in our house. The bat needs food, I said. Sam and Mia were more than happy to go up to the window glass where the cluster flies were clinging and pinch the wings of the flies and put them inside the plastic container. We gave the bat water, but he was too weak to drink.
WHAT THE WIFE SAID: Rabies!
WHAT I SAID: Not everything has rabies. It might be white fungus.
WHAT THE DOCTOR HAD SAID OVER THE PHONE THAT I REPLAYED IN MY HEAD AS I LOOKED AT THE BAT THROUGH THE CLEAR PLASTIC CONTAINER, BREATHING EVER SO SLIGHTLY, HIS HEART IN HIS CHEST MOVING NO MORE NOTICEABLY THAN A VEIN IN A WRIST: You can live just as well with one kidney.
WHERE WE KEPT THE BAT FOR THE NIGHT: In the pantry, on a shelf with a jar of green olives, next to a pipe the hot water ran through and where it was cozy and warm.
WHAT I THOUGHT THE BAT WAS THE SIZE OF: One of my kidneys.
CALL: The children are all calling for me. Jen is sitting on the toilet with the lid down. She is crying. The children have all come running to me to tell me they have found their mother this way.
ACTION: I walk upstairs. I see her sitting on the toilet.
WHAT I SAY: You may want to lift the lid before you pee.
WHAT THE WIFE DOES: She looks up at me. I see the tears streaming down her face, mixing with her hair. Very funny, she says. I put my hand up on the top of the glass shower door to rest it there and look down at her. What’s the matter? I say, feeling how what I’m leaning on is slippery, probably because up high on top of the glass shower door is where I keep my bar of soap so that it doesn’t wash away and disappear while the shower is running.
WHAT THE WIFE SAYS: I don’t think I can do it again. I can’t have someone else in this family in the hospital again. You can’t give your kidney away. You will not give it away. Your children need a healthy father. Your levels might skyrocket after losing a kidney. This kid, this spaceman, you didn’t raise him. You didn’t even know he existed a week ago. This is not about you! she says.
UPDATED LIST OF THINGS MY LEVELS CAN DO: Beg, talk, appreciate food, join a swim team, have common sense, skyrocket.