Above Us Only Sky (8 page)

In Nashville, the toilet flushed. The groupie was back in Freddie's bed.

Freddie asked his father, “When are you planning to go to Florida?”

“I don't know. We are asking Andrei one block down to help for the plan. He has been to Florida before. And I am only joking about you being there. You are too busy for us. We do nothing for you but give you life.”

“I'll come home.” Freddie peeked into his bedroom. The groupie was examining her legs.

“You'll do what?” The Old Man looked to Ingeburg. “He says that he'll come home.”

Using calf muscles she'd forgotten she had, Ingeburg jumped, her old feet rising a good inch off the ground.

“Calm yourself down. He won't come home.”

Folding her hands together, Ingeburg pressed them to her lips.

Freddie told his father, “Tell Mom that I'm coming.”

“That's what the boy says, Inge.” He grumbled, “I'll believe it when I see it.” Surprisingly, the Old Man did believe it, and he felt a kinship to the son he had nearly disowned. Maybe age had made the boy Freddie wiser. Maybe age had made the Old Man softer. Either way, their lives were going to change irrevocably. The Old Man felt it. It felt good, like if he opened his mouth to scream, to warn his sisters that something bad was coming, they would finally hear him.

9

Prudence

T
he clouds rolled in and bore down on the Los Vientos pier. The brown baggers weren't catching fish, just an occasional skate, their tails and wings twitching, the whiteness of their underbellies writhing on the concrete. The black storm clouds came in from the north and settled over us like squat men in capes. We could feel the darkness pressing down.

In Brooklyn, the Old Man kept dreaming, and in Los Vientos Wheaton had his visions. He gave them permanence in his brown notebook, sketching my wings. Like the rendering of the ghostly girl, they were veiled, not fully realized. But I knew them. Meanwhile, I felt them: long feathered things tickling my ankles, making me feel that any four walls were too cramped. We were three individuals feeling global shifts, cosmic ripples, a wall cracking, an iron curtain torn like dusty drapes, the reunification of the Vilkas clan. These things filled us from the inside, a collective breath holding.

It's a bumpy landing, and we're in the back of the plane. Sam Kirk and I wait patiently for the other passengers to gather their carry-ons. I wonder how the pilot would react if I ran my fingers through his candy hair. Not very well, I think.

“I need a glass of water,” he says.

He's sticky with booze. Apparently, neither of us is in a hurry to get up. I pass him my water bottle. “It's been opened, but you can have the rest.”

“Luckily, I'm not a germaphobe.” He guzzles it down, confessing, “I'm better at flying than being a passenger.” He sits up straighter. We watch the other passengers hurrying to disembark, pulling down square suitcases, mothers grabbing hold of children's hands, middle-aged women complaining about the rough landing, the businessmen folding their papers, their
Wall Street Journal
and
New York Times
, securing their laptops, looking anywhere but at the other passengers. Sam Kirk, my new friend, says, “I'm going to see my mother.” He reaches in the seatback for a spiral notebook and a pencil.

“That's nice,” I tell him.

He holds up the pencil. “Not really. I come once a month to write down her memories.”

I'm perplexed, and it shows. Is the pilot also a writer?

He says, “Usually, I drink too much, but it's not like she notices. She has Alzheimer's, and it's getting worse. The only thing she wants is for me to write down her stories and then, when it's worse, and she doesn't know who she is, to read them back to her. She lives in Greenpoint, Brookyln, and last month, she asked me, ‘Do you know where I am? Am I still in Greenpoint?'” He grimaces. “She whispered, ‘I don't know where I am, and I'm afraid to ask anyone.' Then she said, ‘I'm scared. I'm really scared, Roy. I don't want to lose my mind.' Roy was my brother. He's been dead ten years.”

Sam Kirk looks like he's going to cry, and I think about the Old Man. Is he really finally
old
? Will he know me? Does he know Oma? Nothing is more important to him than his family.
He can't lose us
. Then, I do the unexpected. I slip my fingers under Sam Kirk's blond curls. Instead of pulling away, he leans closer, and we stay like that, his sour breath under my nose, on my collar, and in my ear. We look like lovers.

The flight attendants have begun sweeping and collecting trash. Sam Kirk touches my hand, my fingers still twisted in his hair. His eyes are filled with tears. He says, “There's a woman who comes during the day, and my mother has neighbors and friends who stop by, but I don't know for how much longer.” We separate slowly, gracefully. He opens the spiral notebook. The pages are filled with blue script, the pilot's hand. “I never dreamt that my mother would have so many things to say. I never imagined that it would get worse so damn fast, and that's what it is now. This month, I'm reading to her.” I squeeze his hand, and he squeezes back. “I'm reminding her who she is.” As I get up, he awkwardly pulls his wallet out. “My card,” he says. “Here. Let me give you my card.” Sam Kirk is lovely, but he has the wedding-band tan. Just the same, I take the card. He's going to see his mother, and I am going to see the Old Man.

Veronica is already at baggage claim. She still smokes, so she's eager to get outside for a cigarette. “Where were you? What took you so long?”

“I was in the back of the plane.” We don't see her suitcase. “Maybe we should go to Oma's before the hospital?”

Veronica's features soften. “We can do that.” She squeezes my wrist. “If that's what you really want to do.” Sometimes I make my mother out to be this horrible person, but she's not. She's got heart. She doesn't always show it. She's terrified of being vulnerable. I guess we all are.

“I don't know,” I waffle. We had to get to the airport three hours before our flight. “I mean, we could rest up a bit.” Veronica knows what I'm doing—postponing the inevitable.

“Your Oma said that he doesn't have much time,” she reminds me. “The Old Man is old. He's lived a long life.” This is not what I want to hear. It's June 4, 2005, a Saturday. I think I understand the Old Man better than anyone, and this isn't a long life. Not long enough.

Freddie thought that his father lived in the past, but the truth was that the Old Man couldn't escape the past. If he'd been able to forget, maybe he would have. He's always felt guilty for surviving, but whenever he told his story, he kept them, each of them, his mother, his father, and his sisters, alive in some small way. Without a survivor, there's no one to tell the story.

On June 14, 1941, in Vilnius, Lithuania, the Old Man's mother, Aleksandra, was carried away, a soldier's hand squeezing each elbow, her black shoes brushing the ground. She was a beautiful woman born exiled in Kazakhstan. She had walked with Petras, the Old Man's father, back to a home known only through song and story.

At the train station, the Old Man's little sister Daina, the songbird, squeaked, “I'm coming, Mother,” and chased after, but a soldier pointed his gun at Daina and said, “
Begi!
,” which Daina knew to mean “Run!” Her mother told her, “Go now!” Daina ran home to her sisters. Finding no one, she hid in an upstairs closet. As you've heard,
Daina
means “song.” Run sounds like
run
in every language. Three years later in Germany, Ingeburg knew to run. The word
run
is conveyed in the eyes, in one look. Ingeburg had fallen and cracked her tooth, tasted blood. She could imagine the Old Man's little sister running, but there'd been no place to go.

Back at the train station, with the extra push of two Russian soldiers, Aleksandra boarded a cattle car bound for the northern Urals. In the center of the car, there was a hole for urination and defecation. In the center of the car, huddled around this hole, there were women and children and babies. In this place at this point, it was hardest to breathe. Bodies were pressed tight against one another. When the train slowed, there were mothers who dropped their babies through the cattle car's hole, counting on the kindness of a passing stranger to save their infant.

As the train rumbled north, growing colder, the dead were piled on one side of the locked car while the living cowered on the other. The survivors huddled close to keep from freezing, knowing that they were to be worked to death, possibly shot in the back of the head. Why were they singled out for such a cruel fate? Because they were educated? Because they'd been enemies of Russia at one time or another? Because they were landowners? There was no rhyme or reason.

My father heard pieced-together versions of this story from his father, but being a consummate optimist, Freddie imagined that the grandmother he never knew was in a train car that ran off the tracks. Freddie imagined this train car hurtling down an icy hill, the side of the metal car cracking open like an ostrich egg, launching Aleksandra and the other women high into the air. Up there, in the cold temperatures, the air would be frozen. Time would stop. It was easy enough to imagine the spirit of vast-winged birds, knowing the gift of freedom, inhabiting each woman and child, each soul reborn a big gooney bird able to traverse the Pacific.

Early in the morning on June 14, 1941, before the sun, before Aleksandra was taken to a waiting train, Russian soldiers came to the front door of the Vilkas home and shouted things too loudly and quickly. They said that the Old Man's father was a criminal, an enemy of the people. Daina and her sisters gathered behind their father. The Old Man's mother cinched a robe at her waist. Incensed and confused, she stood apart from her daughters. “What is going on?”

It was only then, half-asleep, that the Old Man, who was twenty, practically a boy, still Frederick, came down the stairs. “What time is it?” He yawned.

His mother was livid. She screamed at the soldiers, “Just what do you think you're doing?”

Frederick rubbed his eyes. “What's going on here?”

The soldiers struck Petras with the butt of a rifle. As he fell to his knees, Frederick, a bookish university student, threw his hands in the air. He had long supple fingers and strong narrow wrists. This is the unraveling of the Vilkas clan. Young Frederick's violinist hands are helpless, unable to disturb the universe. There is a war raging inside and out.

The soldiers pulled the Old Man's father to his feet and bound his hands behind his back. Frederick's three sisters crossed their hands like wings, covering their O-shaped mouths. If anyone had pried the girls' fingers apart, the pent-up squeals of horror would've made the soldiers' ears bleed. Frederick put his arms around his mother, demanding, “Let our father go this instant.” The soldiers laughed at him. Frederick lunged, but his sisters, their hands still over their mouths, formed a blockade, their shoulders and legs entangling him.
No, Frederick.
You are not going with Father.
The soldiers tore quickly through the foyer closet, laughing at ladies' hats and shoes. All the while, Frederick's father was bound, helpless. His lip bled. Aleksandra punched at one of the soldiers, who smacked her face. Frederick lunged yet again, but his sisters were fierce, even in their long nightgowns. Already, they seemed of some other world, like mythical sirens, whose voices if released would crack the center beam overhead—sending shards of pine and plaster onto the interlopers' heads, but the girls were silenced, their mouths puckered shut, their forces drained.

Petras Vilkas was taken at gunpoint across green fields to an area behind the slaughterhouse where a mass grave had already been dug by other captives. Frederick ran as fast as he could to keep up with his father, who was still bound, rolling in the back of a Russian truck. When his father was pulled from the truck, Frederick watched from a canopy of pine. He had to do something. He had to protect his father. He had to protect his mother and sisters. Frederick's father was propped beside the hole. The town banker was among the men whose hands were tied behind their backs. Frederick watched as the soldiers went from man to man, taking their jewelry and identification. “Get on your knees,” they ordered. Most of the Lithuanian men knew Russian, but they didn't obey. The soldiers prodded them with rifles. From his hiding spot, Frederick felt like a coward, but he didn't know what to do. His father was on his knees facing a pit. It was a hole the size of which someone would dig to lay the foundation for a house or pour a concrete basement. It was not meant for the bodies of grown men. Frederick convulsed and wept silently. What could he do?