Rise (15 page)

His mom was looking at him, and her eyes were serious. She was waiting for him to agree, but she was wrong about the doctor and
about his grandma, too. “Grandma's not alone,” he said. “Every week I go to see her.” Her eyes were full with angels and spirits, he wanted to say. How could she be lonely when she wasn't ever alone.

Dr. Winer said people need space to breathe. That was true for grown-ups like his parents and it was true for kids, too. She asked him if he thought the numbers were keeping him from making friends. Maybe he spent too much time alone when he should be playing instead. She was wrong, of course, but he didn't mind. He liked the sound of her voice and the way the light came through her office window. There was a courtyard two floors down and a maple tree that had started to flower. Another month and the choppers would fall from the branches. Those seeds would flutter down like wings. All that time he spent in Dr. Winer's office, all that time talking and watching the branches through the window, and this is what he learned: It's good to have somebody who will listen even if they don't understand.

Count the tiles in the bathroom floor, but not the cracked one by the tub. That one brought bad luck. The cans in the pantry and the empty water bottles. His mother never stacked them right. She piled them by the washer. Count them and carry the numbers with you because you'll need them where you're going. Mr. Driscoll the school bus driver coughed six times before they got to Chelton. He had asthma this time of year. He said it was the pollen. Count them and keep them and work them round and round until they give him back his air.

He cleaned out his Grandma Hooper's gutters. It was May already, and she was worried about rain. She let him climb the ladder and walk along the roof. There were needles up there and bent rusty nails, and he felt like his dad when he stood on those shingles. He was flying in the clouds. Grandma Hooper looked so small down there. She was wearing her jogging pants and her VFW visor. “Be careful at the edges,” she was saying. “Take it slow and steady.” He gathered up the leaves
and all the needles and stuffed them in a garbage bag. By the time he was halfway around the house the bag was full to bursting. He found a dead raccoon and a bird's nest with cracked pieces of pale green shell. He wondered where the birds had gone and whether the babies had lived. He'd seen a blue jay once eat a baby starling. It lifted the baby right from the nest and carried it away. “Tie it up,” his grandma said. Her hands were on her hips. “Drop it down when it's full.”

He'd filled up two bags and started a third before he was done. He went back down the ladder, and that was worse than climbing up. He couldn't see where he was going. His grandma dusted him off and made him wipe his shoes, and she had the ice cream ready. She'd let it get a little soft so she could work the scooper. “Don't tell your momma what you did for me,” she said. “I don't want her to worry. And don't tell her about the ice cream either. She's fussy when it comes to sugar.”

“I won't tell,” he said. His mom had too many worries already, and they were mostly about him.

He ate his ice cream, stirring it around until it was smooth as pudding, and his grandma started to pray. She prayed when the mood hit her because she didn't believe in churches. She set her hands together and talked directly to the king of kings. The one who knows things that are uncertain and obscure. “Grant me strength,” she said, “and bless my babies all of them and the travelers far from home.” Her voice went deep, and her eyes were closed so she could feel the spirit.

She kissed him on the cheek when his mom came to pick him up. Her lips were dry as paper. She leaned in close and held him by the shoulders, and her hands were stronger than they looked. “Don't be scared,” she said. “Show them kindness while they're here.”

Four weeks and six days and eleven hours. The numbers didn't bring his father home. Forty-nine thousand six hundred and twenty minutes. It was longer than he'd ever been gone before, and his mom was on the LifeCycle again. She'd stopped putting on her lipstick and blow-drying her hair. She worked out until her face was shiny. “One thing in this life is true as the stars,” she said. “Your daddy and I both love you.”

•

Dr. Winer wasn't sitting in her chair when he came in to see her. She was underneath her desk. “I've lost my earring,” she was saying. “I heard it when it fell.” She was moving around down there, and Raymond went on his knees, too, so he could help her look. He crawled on the outside of the desk and felt the wood floor with his fingers.

“I've got the backing right here,” she said. “But I can't find the pearl.”

Raymond worked his way in circles away from the desk. The sun was coming through the window, and it shone across the wooden floors and made them look like honey. He was halfway to the wall before he found the earring. It was gold and not white like the pearls his mom put on when she wore her party dress.

“I've got it,” he said. He pushed himself up and held it high so she could see it was okay. “Look how far it rolled.”

Doctor Winer came up from behind her desk. She smiled and pulled her sweater straight, and everything about her was touched with silver. Raymond had to cover his eyes. “You saved me today,” she said, and she came to him and took it from his hand. “My husband bought me these on our honeymoon.”

She stepped out from the light. She put the earring back in her ear and checked to make sure it was in tight, and when she turned around there was a shadow over her head. Raymond saw it floating in the air. It was real as the pearl he'd found or the scabs on his hands from cleaning his grandma's gutters.

“We're going to the Bahamas next week,” Dr. Winer said. She rolled her chair back to its spot, and the halo went with her. “I want to take this pair along.”

She sat down the way she always did, and she reached for her pen and notebook. “Three months taking lessons in a pool, and I'll finally see some fish.”

Raymond looked out the window. The gardeners were wheeling the mowers off their truck. The lawn was green already, and they'd started planting the flower beds. “Look how nice it is out there,” he said. “It's warm enough for shorts.” He could hear the halo this time.
It was thrumming like a hive. The sound filled the room, and the doctor didn't notice. “Are you sure you have to go?”

“It won't be long. Not even two weeks.”

Raymond didn't sit down in his chair. He went to the window where she kept her snow globes and picked up the sleeping mermaid. He cradled her in his hand. She sat beside a treasure chest, and there were stones inside and strands of silver pearls.

He shook the globe and set it back down. He leaned over the window ledge. Three of the gardeners were gathered around the fountain. They were wet from working the nozzle. One of them had a metal brush, and he was scrubbing down the cement and the tiles around the basin. The water made a rainbow in the sun. They were working beneath it and didn't look up, but Raymond saw it from where he was. He saw the droplets and the birds in the branches. He saw every tile and tree.

“Maybe you shouldn't go.” He wanted to tell her that he saw bad things sometimes. That he knew what was going to happen. She should stay where she was because it was almost summer. The air was sweet, but the mountains still had their snow. “My mom says people fall off those cruise ships.”

“That's true,” Dr. Winer said. “But people can fall at home, too. And we're just going on a little sailboat. Even if I fall they'll turn around and find me.” It was beautiful where she was going, she told him. The water was bathtub-warm.

She turned serious again and started to ask him questions. She wanted to know about things that weren't important. His dad was flying planes from Denver to Phoenix and staying in a hotel. His mom was working out more every day, and the veins were starting to show in her arms. All those sets he counted and her face was clenched from the strain and she didn't look stronger when she was done. The exercise was wearing her down.

He walked back and forth behind Dr. Winer's desk. He could hear her pen pushing against the paper, and he didn't look at her or the cloud over her head. Her computer was humming and the halo, too, and he wanted to cover his ears. It'd be a blessing if his eyes went cloudy. He could go outside then. He wouldn't have to look at the
ground. He'd pray for people he couldn't see, and he wouldn't feel their passing.

His mother rang the office bell before the hour was over. Her watch was always a little fast. Dr. Winer stood up at the sound. She went to the window and picked up the mermaid. “Keep her,” she said. “This one's always been your favorite. I could tell from the first day you came.”

She set it in his hands. Before he could say no or give it back, she pulled him in for a hug. She hadn't done that before, and he held on to her and didn't let go, not until his mother came through the door.

I
t began with a shimmering in both his eyes. He was sitting at the store monitor and the letters started to blur. They went from black to silver, and he rubbed his eyes and closed the shades to cut down on the glare. It was almost six o'clock in the evening and he needed to check the database tables. They were liquidating the inventory, but nobody was buying. A lady had come in at lunchtime and napped on the Tempurpedic without any explanation. She thanked him when she left and straightened out her skirt. Couples came in all day long and bickered because the mattresses were too hard or too soft or weren't suitable for backsleepers. He was thankful for Marci then because she didn't fuss about the little things. She'd stopped coloring her hair, but she still drank wine at dinner.
Fetuses need antioxidants, too
, she'd say.
It's my duty to eat chocolate
.

He scrolled through the summary table which showed him every mattress left in the store and down at the warehouse on Cascade. He'd switched the store to IntelliTrack because that program really worked, but he couldn't stay focused now because the numbers were silver and the monitor, too, and it was like looking at snow with the sun shining on it.

The bell on the door rang and it was a blond lady with an Alaskan husky on a leash. Even from across the showroom he could see the dog's pale eyes. The lady's eyes were blue, too, and rimmed with dark liner. She was dressed like a teenager with her skinny jeans, but she
must have been over sixty. “I'm sorry, ma'am,” he said. “Unless that's a service dog you can't bring him inside.”

The lady sat down on the Serta Perfect Day right beside the door. The dog jumped up beside her, and they lay down together like a man and wife. “He's not hurting anybody,” she said. Her voice was young, too, almost high-pitched as a girl's. She looked up at the ceiling and set her hands behind her head.

“That's true,” he said. As he came closer to the Serta their faces began to blur. He saw only their outlines and the blue of her jeans and jacket. “But I can't have dogs sleeping on our samples.”

She sat up and he couldn't see the expression on her face or whether her eyes were open, but he saw her hand come to her hip like a schoolteacher lecturing a wayward student. “How are we supposed to know if it's comfortable if we both can't try it out?”

“Why don't you tie him up out front? That way you can take your time.”

“That won't work,” she said. “We make all our decisions together.”

“I'm sorry,” he said again, and he held out both his hands. “I don't think I can help you.” They always came in just before closing. The cranky people with herniated discs and the peculiar folks with their Burger King bags who wanted to eat their french fries on his samples.

“Don't tell me you're sorry,” she said. “I hear that every day. Where's your manager? I need to talk to him.”

“I'm the manager. I manage all our stores in town.” He looked back at the clock over the desk and it was quarter past six. Another fifteen minutes and he could lock the door.

“No wonder you're going out of business. With policies like that.” She stood up and her dog did, too, and he held the door for them and watched them walk past the liquor store and the Summit eco-cleaners. He could see them clearly once they were farther away. She turned one more time to look back at his store, and he could tell from her profile she'd once been pretty.

He went to Walgreens and bought reading glasses like the ones his father used to wear. Little Ben Franklin lenses that sat low on his nose. He started with the 1.5 power glasses because the stronger
ones made him dizzy. He had a pair in the bathroom so he could read his science magazines and another on his nightstand. He had three more pairs at the store. For a little while when he wore them the clouds were gone from his eyes, and he could read the sheets again and update the database entries. Marci teased him because he left them everywhere.
Hey, grandpa
, she'd say.
All you need is a sweater vest and a pipe
, and she'd give him a light punch in the ribs because she knew he couldn't hit her back. She stood there in her nurse's scrubs and he could see her face again and the pooch of her belly. She was three months along and just beginning to show. Every morning she looked a little different.

On Saturdays he left early to go running. He got up without turning on the lights because Marci needed her sleep. She tossed at night even with her earplugs. She said it was her hormones, she could feel them bubbling in her blood, and then she'd laugh because nurses weren't supposed to talk that way.