Calling Home (16 page)

Authors: Michael Cadnum

BOOK: Calling Home

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“You're looking good,” he would say.

“I feel good,” I would reply, or something ordinary in just about those words. It was true. I felt stronger.

He almost always commented that I was putting on weightâgood weight, muscle. And that I was getting a tan, and that I looked like a different person.

I was the same person, and my looks had not changed that much.

There was a lake at Camp Modoc, a reedy, green pond, really, and a turtle lived in it. My father and I would walk around the lake, and when the turtle appeared, just once, I pointed. “The turtle!” I exclaimed, and my father was excited to have seen it, more excited than was really necessary, because he was glad to see me happy.

One day just after my dad left, I realized that I had not tasted alcohol in months.

Sometimes I was very hungry for something sweet, and a counselor told me that my body was used to raw calories. I looked forward to a Snickers bar at night, when the stars were so bright they nearly made a sound.

My mother's visits were so potentially disastrous that we acted like friendly strangers. “I brought you some more books,” she would say. Our silent agreement seemed to be to pretend that I was in a kind of army, stationed in a scenic, rugged place where I could work hard and read, but also a place I would be glad to leave.

Even on the drive home after months of thin air and circling hawks, I felt sure of myself. My mother drove carefully, changing lanes rarely, all the way past Sacramento and Vacaville, staying under the speed limit as though I had been through surgery and might feel pain at the slightest crack in the road.

I believed that everything would be fine. And it was fine. I believed everything I had been told. Life was really not that complicated. It was simple, really.

I was wrong.

Wishing I were invisible, holding my breath, I went by the house where Mead's parents lived, and there was a
CENTURY
21 sign in the front yard. The lawn was greener than usual, and had been mowed. There were still drying blades of grass on the sidewalk.

The thought of Mr. Litton's eyes burned something deep inside me. I finally made myself ask Lani, and she told me, softly, that Mr. Litton had been in the hospital, but that he was better now.

One evening I sat in the gym of a Unitarian church and watched Lani, a virtual stranger in a black dress, like someone in a PBS special, put her hands on the black and white keys and still every heart in the room.

Angela spoke to me only once after I came back. She called to say that she was moving. She was going to study broadcasting at UCLA. I think her call was a preemptive strike, a way of keeping me from trying to call her. Maybe her brother suggested it. She did not mention what I had done. She didn't have to.

I still had therapy sessions, and saw a man named Dr. Sperry, a big man with a wrinkled face like a crumpled paper bag. He would lean on his fist so the wrinkles in his face ran at an angle, and when I made a joke, he had a rumbling laugh.

I told him that I thought I was well, now, and he smiled, although he did not suggest that I stop seeing him.

One night I woke after a dreamless sleep. And I spoke.

I sat up in bed and said, “I'm all right. Don't worryâI'm all right.”

I gripped the sheets in my fists. I was cold, and could not move, staring at the blank dark.

Mead's voice
.

Mead's voice was back.

Impersonating the dead is easy. It comes as naturally as sleep, and is as nourishing.

I feel him in me some nights, a quick, dancing figure, a flame. By day he is always gone.

This is something I cannot master; the living. They are hard to impersonate: their faith, their ability to get up in the morning and go to bed at night and remain always exactly who they are.

I learn slowly. Sometimes at night, I feel myself gliding over the bottom of a pool, my shadow far below me, changing shape with the curve of the pool. And the shape is not mine, it is Mead's. He is with me, but I cannot beckon to him or turn myself into him at will, because he is separate, with his own life, his own time and place.

In my secret way, I am learning to swim from one day to another. I am not what I pretend to be, with my smile, but I am not Mead. I am something else, someone not here yet.

I am no one, then. Just a living person. I lie still, listening to the city cough awake outside. I am not afraid. Somewhere out there is a future, hanging like an invisible suit of clothes, warm, poised, and waiting to gather me in, naked and shivering from the dawn.

About the Author

Michael Cadnum is the author of 35 books for adults and young adults. His workâwhich includes thrillers, suspense novels, historical fiction, and books about myths and legendsâhas been nominated for the National Book Award (
The Book of the Lion
), the Edgar Award (
Calling Home
and
Breaking the Fall
), and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (
In a Dark Wood
). A former National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow, he is also the author of award-winning poetry.
Seize the Storm
(2012) is his most recent novel.

Michael Cadnum lives in Albany, California, with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover design by Drew Padrutt

ISBN: 978-1-5040-1974-3

This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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New York, NY 10014

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