The Heaven of Animals: Stories (26 page)

They argued until Joshua plunged the blade into the turkey and sat down. Mark stood, unsunk the blade, and peeled smooth, even slices from the second breast.

None of which mattered, in the end, as, halfway through, the blade caught and the meat wouldn’t give. The turkey, at its center, was ice. Marisa, it turned out, didn’t do much cooking and hadn’t known to thaw the Butterball before baking.

The bird was returned to the oven, but, by the time it was done, the meat was dry and crumbed beneath the blade. They ate, the four of them, not speaking, and though Joshua and Marisa would, over the years, invite them often for visits, there would never be another invitation to Thanksgiving, not before the one that came for Mark alone.

That night, on the foldout couch, Mark and Lorrie argued.

“You should be nicer to your brother,” she said.

“I’m nice enough,” he said.

“You’re
not,
” she said, and, the way she’d said it, it stuck with him.

“He’ll kill himself with those cigarettes,” Mark said.

At this, Lorrie pulled the pillow from beneath her head, held it to her face, and fake-smothered herself.

“What do you want from me?” he asked.

“I want you to try,” she said.

“I’m trying,” he said, but he wasn’t, and he knew it, and he knew she was right when she said, “You could try so much harder.”

She’d meant more than with his brother, of course. She’d meant with her, with their marriage, which had, just that year, taken an unexpected turn. Mark couldn’t say what had happened. It was as though they’d been piloting a makeshift bicycle built for two. Approaching a tree, they’d veered, each in a different direction, and both been left on the pavement, bloodied, half a bike apiece. They weren’t the people they’d married. Their lives, their time and how they spent it, what they wanted and what came next—they’d changed, and Mark had been afraid.

“You’re so
hard
on people,” she said. “One day he’ll be gone, and you’re going to regret every word.”

But Joshua wasn’t gone, and it seemed a cruel joke now that Lorrie was.

That night, she watched him a long time. She did the thing he liked, tracing his face, a fingertip over his forehead, across his cheeks and chin, and down his nose.

She said, “I predict for you a long, unhappy life.”

And then she fell asleep.

And then she’d stayed, stayed with him for years, trying to make it work, trying harder than him, trying right up to the second her car went off the road.

.   .   .

It wasn’t the old man or the young man who pulled him from the water. It was none of the nudists.

Though it was dark and he was too far out to be sure, he thought he recognized the figure moving down the beach, was sure he knew the gait, the frame lit up by firelight. The figure paused by the fire, turned seaward, and Mark knew who it must be, for who else would tear off his shirt like that, who else kick off his shoes and charge and dive?

And, then, he was there, waving and hollering, and Mark couldn’t say how long it had taken. Things had slowed—the water’s slosh, his brother biting the waves—everything a syrupy, bubbling churn. Joshua’s teeth flashed. His words were roars. Then his hands were on him and Mark was in a headlock, his body trailing while Joshua reached one-armed toward shore. The water surged, and the arm at his neck loosened and tightened with every wave.

He’d been unprepared for that, for the force of the waves, the current and the cold. Onshore, the water had seemed a gelatin with a rippling skin. But, once you were in it, well, it was everything his brother had warned him it would be. How many bodies, he wondered, had this bay claimed, not only those who leapt from the bridge made famous for all the leapings but those, like him, who let the current carry them out and out?

But he couldn’t take his brother with him. Joshua would go under before he let go, and so Mark would have to swim.

He yelled. He struggled and was not released. He swung and the fist met Joshua’s jaw. Then he was free, and he swam. Joshua cut a path through the water, and Mark followed, followed until sand squeaked underfoot. He gave in at the end, gave himself to the cold and let Joshua pull him ashore, over sand and up the beach to the waiting fire.

But the fire wasn’t enough. Stretched on a blanket by the flames, he felt nothing, his body an unmoving blue. The fire was a tangle around which bodies bobbed and spun. Joshua’s voice was there, then a heaviness. Arms wrapped his chest, and he knew that the body was his brother’s.

“Come on, people,” Joshua called, and then there were bodies on all sides, bodies and hair, bodies and fat, bodies on bodies, until the numb turned to itch, the itch to pain—the worst pain of his life. Pins, trillions of them, needled his flesh. He shook, convulsed. The spasms, he couldn’t hold them back. His teeth chattered until he could taste, and, when he could, he tasted blood.

In time, the chattering stopped. The shaking turned to shivering. The bodies pulled away, and then there was only Joshua at his back, Joshua shivering too. There was presence of mind now, enough to know that he was naked, he and his brother with him, enough to know and not to care. The heat came, and his body took all it could.

.   .   .

A light glowed in the apartment stairwell, and Mark watched a moth crash into it.

On the stoop beneath the light, without letter or explanation, sat his suitcase. A yellow ticket was bungeed to the handle. The black piping that hugged the zipper’s track had been coming loose, and now it hung, a rubbery cord that curled like a pig’s tail along the ground.

“I told you they’d find it,” Joshua said before saying, “I didn’t mean that. I didn’t mean ‘I told you so.’”

Mark felt himself swaying. His feet throbbed and his arms ached. The cold had emptied him of sentiment, of longing of any kind. He wanted nothing more than to lie down, to be warm, and to sleep a good long while.

He owed Joshua an explanation. He couldn’t say why he’d jumped in or what he’d been after, only that he’d never meant to get so far out. Except that, in the end, when he’d come that close to it, when he’d held up his hands, seen the shore and calculated the space between—when he’d known for sure he would sink before making it back—he hadn’t been afraid.

“I’m sorry about the eye,” Joshua said.

He nodded. “Sorry about the jaw.” Joshua’s face, where he’d hit him, was purpling, the jawline swollen, puffy fruit. “And the television.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I’ll buy you another one.”

“Don’t
worry
about it,” Joshua said. He lit a cigarette.

Mark held out two fingers. He hadn’t had a cigarette since college, had never really been a smoker. Joshua looked surprised, then looked as though he were trying to appear unsurprised, then passed the cigarette. Mark took a drag and coughed. His throat burned, lungs too, but he felt buoyant, untethered in just the right way.

Joshua lit another cigarette, and together they filled the stairwell up with smoke.

Overhead, more moths rattled the bulb.

Joshua dropped his cigarette and ground it out, and Mark did the same.

He wondered what waited inside. Marisa—he wouldn’t know what to say when he saw her. But already Joshua had his bag in his hands and was moving through the open door.

They found Marisa on the floor, legs crossed, a screwdriver in her hand, a table leg in her lap. She stood at the sight of them, and Mark could only imagine how they looked to her, their busted faces, their salt-slicked hair. She might have demanded an explanation, and Joshua might have given it, but she didn’t ask and Joshua didn’t offer. Another something better left unsaid.

If she’d spoken of the kiss, his brother had dismissed it. But, seeing her, Mark knew she hadn’t, knew too, right then, there’d be no motel room, no Chinese takeout. They’d pass through this, all of them.

From his neighbors, he knew the sign for
thank you,
a hand brought to the mouth and the arm tipping, unfolding from the body like a wing. His fingers found his lips, and Marisa smiled. He was absolved, forgiven before his hand left his face.

The Baby Glows

T
here is nothing else about the baby that one might call unusual, nothing uncharacteristic of other babies. The baby does not skip rope. The baby does not levitate. The baby cannot line up dominos across the kitchen counter with his mind. The baby just glows.

The baby is not bright like a fire or a star. His light is soft as a glow stick’s, the kind you buy at a carnival and snap to make shine.

LUMINESCENT BABY SHOCKS WORLD!
one headline reads. Another:
FIRE BABY HOT TO MOTHER’S TOUCH!

The baby’s body temperature is 98.6 degrees.

It startles the mother to open the nursery door to a radiant cloud over the crib. Then, she remembers, takes him in her arms, and holds him the way any mother would hold any baby.

The baby does not glow
sometimes
. The baby is
always
glowing.

It’s only unusual because it hasn’t happened before. Stranger things have happened: Babies born with tails. Babies with extra arms or eyes. Pairs of babies born sharing a stomach. This baby has no extra parts.

The baby is not magic.

A glowing baby comes in handy. Cradling the child, the father will travel downstairs in the night, finish laundry, search the pantry for snacks without flipping a switch. The mother doesn’t like when the father does this. “The baby,” she says, “is not a lightbulb.”

Nothing else about the baby glows. The baby cries normal tears, drools normal drool, and—it must be said—poops normal poop.

And what becomes of a glowing baby? Will he grow into a glowing boy? Will he become a man who glows on his way to work, who confuses pedestrians at traffic lights? Will he marry, and, if he does, will his husband or wife wear a blindfold to bed?

He will require exclusive showings at movie theaters. He will cause headaches at airport security. Common sense says he’ll never be eligible for the draft.

Some think that the older he gets, the brighter the baby will be. Some say his luminosity will fade with age, like childhood allergies. Others wager he’ll beam at this relative wattage until, until—

One doesn’t like to consider it, but the baby will die. One day, the baby, whether baby or man or boy, will be laid into a casket, the casket lowered into the ground. By then, one imagines, the light will have gone out. But one never knows. Perhaps he’ll glow past his last breath, the way hair is said to grow for days from the dead. Perhaps.

Do you see him there, glowing belowground?

See the grass that grows from the baby’s grave. See it sparkle. And a new species of incandescent worm to be discovered not far from the cemetery. And the moles that feed on these worms, their noses stars already.

There they go, tunneling, rocketing through earth, chasing those tender, smoldering fingers of snout, clawing their way up and up, and out, and into light.

The Disappearing Boy

T
he summer before sixth grade, we both hoped we’d turn into superheroes. When it was just the two of us, we went by our code names. I was Quicksilver, after the Marvel hero, a poor man’s Flash. I was a born runner. Since the first grade, I’d always been the fastest kid on the playground, a fact undisputed at River Run Elementary, though, soon enough, middle school would find me in competition with older boys whose legs, dark with hair, would carry them at speeds I’d never match. Jason’s moniker was more original. He dreamed of being invisible, but the only invisible hero we knew of was the Fantastic Four’s Invisible Woman. I said he could be the Invisible Boy, but Jason said that was gay and dubbed himself the Disappearing Boy. We had our own gang too. Jason was the leader and I was his sidekick. We called ourselves the Silver Surfers, after another one of our favorite comic book characters. There was no one else in the gang.

It was a strange time in our lives, a difficult time. It was the summer we competed with one another for no good reason, seeing who could swim the most laps holding his breath underwater. By mid-June, Jason could do one lap and I could do two, the length of the public pool, down and back. I clawed at the water, kicked like a frog until my lungs screamed and fireworks went off in my head.

This was the long, hot summer of war games and tree forts, ice cream sandwiches and backyard tents, ghost stories and PG-13 movies, which Jason’s mom rented whenever we asked, though we were two years too young. It was the summer of the new neighborhood and our secret hideout, the place where it all happened, where we first became acquainted with the flesh.

.   .   .

We discovered the magazines in the basement of an unfinished house, a place older kids went at night to smoke and make out. Days, though, we had the place to ourselves.

The magazines: Neither of us had seen anything like them before. Here were women, just like our mothers, but with no clothes on.

The first time was only a glance. We knew we shouldn’t have seen what we’d seen. Otherwise, we’d have been shown this before. What we’d seen was wrong, we just weren’t sure how.

We spoke of the pictures to no one. The next day, we returned—to make sure someone had come back for them, we told ourselves—but the magazines were still there, a small, mildewed stack in one dusty corner of the basement. After some deliberation, we decided it wouldn’t hurt to examine a few.

Jason opened one to a red, satin backdrop and a picture that spanned two pages. On hands and knees, a woman arched her back like a cat stretching after a nap. She wore nothing but a lacy, black scarf.

“Holy bastard!” Jason said. (This was also the summer we learned to swear.) Jason was better at it than I was. He modeled his obscenities, best he could, after R-rated movies, the ones he watched on HBO when his mom was out, which was pretty much always. There were the movies, and then there were the men his mom brought home. My mother wouldn’t spring for cable, let alone HBO, and a man hadn’t set foot in our house in years. This put me at a disadvantage when it came to cursing and was one more reason I envied the life Jason led.