The Good Life (28 page)

“What do you call that?” Patrick says.

“High school.” She sees where he's going with this, pursuing the miraculous in a fifteen-year-old girl's meltdown. She also sees the sweet, merciless light picking out the new wrinkles beside his eyes. He is too old to be groping to make up a ritual, which means that Aless is too old to be abetting him. She can hear Eleanora's fluty voice:
We always have the tools. We have only to recognize them
.

“Let's get going. It seems cruel to keep the doves in their cage any longer.”

“Right now? Like this?” The two sleeping bags are still lumpily unfurled, the embers from the little fire glow, the torn coffee pouch is stuffed into Patrick's unwashed cup.

“She won't mind.” Patrick picks up his pack and the noisy cage and walks to the top of the slope. He stretches his arms above his head, then bends until his nose grazes his knees. From her long-ago yoga class, Aless recognizes the Sun Salutation. Standing fussily straight, he rolls his shoulders and flattens his palms against the small breeze. “Tadasana: The Mountain,” he says.

While he adjusts his posture, she has time to take in the view and wonder how different things would be if they hiked all the way to the original spot. She can't help thinking that Patrick is keeping that place from her, now that she has smirched the memory of his beloved, even though the thought is unworthy—of him, if not her. She wonders if she would be a kinder person if she were not in love with Patrick. More patient. More giving. More like Eleanora, who loved everything, and whom Patrick had the good sense to love while he could.

“You can move,” Patrick says without shifting his mountain stance. “This isn't church.”

“I'm meditating,” she says.

“Don't you need a learner's permit?”

“I am letting the spirit move me.” Cautiously, she rubs her jaw, its clean line such a good feature for the stage. At one of her last auditions, before she left Los Angeles, the director said, “There's nothing loose in you.” She winces, remembering how proud she was of that.

Patrick finally slumps out of Tadasana, rolling his neck and shoulders. “Are you ready?”

“This is your show,” she says gently.

Taking the box from his pack, he flings the first handful of ashes in an arc before him, as if he were sowing seed. The ashes fall gracefully from his hand, and a few pieces glitter when they catch the light. The moment looks like something from a movie. Reaching back into the box, he sows the ashes again and again, handful after handful, impressing Aless with the sheer amount of Eleanora. She takes close to ten minutes to be scattered, and then Patrick steps back from the ridge, rubbing his arm. “Now the doves.”

Like a magician's assistant, Aless hands him the cage. He has to nudge the first bird out, so tightly are they packed, but the others spill behind, and two of the six start to fly, landing a few feet away and pecking at the dirt. The others cluster near the door, making their
cdllcdll
sound. None of them shows the least desire to take flight.

“This is funny, isn't it?” Patrick says.

“In a way.” It hurts her to look at his befuddled face, so she charges down the slope, pounding her aching legs on the dirt, waving her arms and shouting. The pigeons rise, fanning out over the canyon, panic making their fat bodies spurt through the air. Moving even faster is the hawk who appears like a dot in the sky, dropping onto one of the pigeons and carrying it away. Patrick has been looking from side to side, one hand shielding his eyes. He might have missed the hawk. He says, “Eleanora would have loved this,” which could go either way.

“I do, too,” says Aless, moving back up the slope to join him.

“Now I have nothing.”

“Health. Education. Your life stretching before you.”

“That's not what I mean. I really have nothing. My hands are full of nothing.” His hands are actually covered with fine ash, though it seems tasteless to point that out.

“You were right,” he is saying. “Now that her ashes are gone, I'm changed. Things are not the same. It's time to embrace life.”

Aless lifts her face. Patrick has promised to carry her. When she opens her eyes, she sees he has not moved, but he is smiling at her.

“Would you teach me to sing?” he says.

For an interesting moment, the world turns white. Aless can't even see Patrick, although she hears his smooth voice, which has asked so many things. The asking never stops, nor the giving.

“Open your mouth,” she says. “Then make the biggest sound you can.”

He lets out a little croak. “More,” she says.

His second sound is almost the same; she can see self-consciousness freezing his mouth. She taps his jaw, which she has never touched before. “Bigger! Yell! Raise the roof!” To show him what he should be doing, she opens her own mouth and lets sound pour out. For a moment her roar obliterates everything—wind and bird calls and distant, prowling creatures. Patrick stops and looks at her admiringly, and she gestures at him to join her. He opens his mouth again and does a little better.

E
RIN
M
C
G
RAW
is the author of three previous books, and has published stories and essays in the
Atlantic Monthly, Story
, and many other publications. Her last story collection was a
New York Times
Notable Book, and her work has been featured on National Public Radio's
Selected Shorts
. McGraw has received fellowships from Yaddo, MacDowell, and Stanford University. She is married to the poet Andrew Hudgins and is a professor of creative writing at Ohio State University.