The Woman Who Married a Cloud: The Collected Short Stories (14 page)

I propped my crutches against the wall and manoeuvred down into a chair next to the bed.

“Hiya, kid.”

The smile again and a finger-wiggle from one of the hands lying crossed on the small hill of her chest.

“You won, didn’t you?” Her voice was thick and coated with phlegm.

I had planned to be funny but firm when we spoke, but my plans were no match for her broken energy. Death was in charge here; she was its deputy, so she held all the cards.

“Can I talk to you alone, Egan?”

It was said so quietly that I was sure Kathleen couldn’t have heard, but I winced anyway.

“Kat, would you mind if we were alone for a bit?”

She nodded, her face a mix of pity and confusion. She left, closing the door silently behind her.

“Kathleen sees another man sometimes, Egan, His name is Vitamin D. Sometimes she says she’s going to work, but she goes over to his house instead.” She watched me while she spoke, her eyes vacant, her voice untenanted by any kind of expression. Then she reached over and took my hand as gently as you pick up a pin that’s fallen to the floor. “Just ask her. Friend told me before. He said you should know.”

Our drive home was silent. The wind had picked up, and everything would whip back and forth for a while and then stop dead.

It was my night to make the dinner, so I went straight to the kitchen as soon as we got back to the apartment. Kathleen turned on the television in the living room. I heard her say something to Friend that sounded like a greeting.

I poured water into a pot for spaghetti, and thought about the ten thousand dollars. I put butter and minced garlic into a frying pan and thought about Vitamin D, whoever
that
was.

“Oh damn! Friend, take it off! Friend, no!”

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. Friend just jumped up on to the couch with his bone. He made a spot. I’ll get it.”

She came into the kitchen, shaking her head and smiling. “The beast! I keep telling him not to do that. It’s the only time he ever growls at me.” She shook her head.

“He’s just used to my old couch where he could do what he wanted.”

She made a big fuss at the sink getting a rag, the cleaner, turning on the tap. “Well, this is a new couch and a new day in this dog’s life!”

“Kat, stop for a moment, will you? I want to ask you something. Do you know a guy named Vitamin D?”

“Not a guy, but I know the guy who started it. Victor Dixon. He’s their lead guitarist.” She turned off the tap and squeezed the rag into the sink. “How do you know about Vitamin D? You never listen to rock.”

“Who’s Victor Dixon?”

“An old boyfriend of mine. He started the group. They’ve just begun to make it. MTV’s begun showing their first video. Did you see it?”

The water was boiling. I wanted to drop the spaghetti in, but couldn’t right then. Too scared?

“What went on ... What went on between you two?”

She crossed her arms and sighed. Her eyes were twinkling. “Jealous, huh? That’s good! Well, I knew him in college. After that he disappeared for a few years, then he turned up one day and we hung around together for a couple of months. He was more friend than boyfriend, even though a lot of people thought we had a big thing going. Why are you asking? How did we get on to this?”

“Jazz told me—”

Friend started barking crazily in the other room. “Friend! Friend! Friend!” It sounded like he had gone totally nuts. Kathleen and I looked at each other and moved.

On television, a man beat a white baby seal over the head with a wooden truncheon. The seal screamed while its head spewed dark blood on to the snow. Japanese fishermen pulled in huge fishing nets full of dead dolphins. Friend stood next to the set and barked.

“Friend, stop!”

On television, a man prised open a wooden crate. Inside were ten dead parrots clumped together in a colourful, orderly row. Over the barking, I made out something about the illegal importation of rare birds into the United States.

“Friend, shut up!”

“Oh Egan, look.”

A dog was strapped to an operating table. Its stomach was cut wide open and its lips were twisted way up over the teeth. Its eyes were mad with fear.

That’s all we needed then—a documentary on educational TV about cruelty to animals.

It had been an impossible, weird day. The kind where the best thing to do is throw up your hands, go directly to bed after dinner, and hope that it ends there.

But the air was full of something wrong and deep, and we ended up having everything out over dinner.

Victor Dixon was still around. No, she hadn’t touched him since we had been together. But yes, he did call her at work sometimes. Yes, they had gone out to lunch once or twice. No, nothing ever happened. Didn’t I believe her? How could I even think that?

I said I wanted very much to believe her, but why hadn’t she told me about him before?

Because it only made things more confused, according to her.

Our voices got louder, and dinner—a nice dinner—got colder. Friend stayed with us until about Round Three, then he slunk out of the room, head and tail low. I felt like telling him to stay: hadn’t he started this war in the first place?

“So what is
your
definition of trust, Egan: as far as you can throw me?”

“Very funny, but come on, Kathleen. How would you feel if you were in my place? Turn the situation around.”

“I would feel fine, thank you. Because I would believe what you told me.”

“Gee, you’re quite a girl.”

That did it. She got up and stormed out of there.

While I waited and worried, Jasenka called twice within an hour.

The first time she said only that Kathleen was at Vitamin D’s house, and gave me the telephone number.

I called. A very sleepy man with a Southern accent answered. I asked for her.

“Hey bud, do you know what
time
it is? Kat isn’t here. I haven’t seen her for days. Jesus, do you know what time it is? Hey, how’d you get this number anyway? It’s unlisted! Did Kat give it to you? Man, she’s going to get it when I see her again. She promised she wouldn’t give it out to anyone.”

“Look, this is really important. I’d really appreciate it if you would let me talk to her. I’m her brother and we’ve got some serious family problems.”

“Hey, I’m really sorry, but she really isn’t here. But hold it a sec—I do have this other number where you might be able to reach her.”

He gave me my telephone number.

The second call from Jasenka lasted longer. Her voice was a child’s whisper in a parent’s ear. The words slowed and died at the end of every sentence.

“Egan? It’s me again. Listen, you have to listen to me. The animals are rising. It’s happening much sooner than I thought. They’re going to kill everyone. They’ve had enough. Only their friends will be saved. Every animal in the world will do it. They’ll kill everyone.

“Get a map as soon as you hang up. There’s an island in Greece called Formori. F-O-R-M-O-R-I. You must go there immediately tomorrow. Everything will be starting in three days.”

“Jazz—”

“No, be quiet! Formori is the place where they’ll let some people live. People who are the animals’ friends. Friend says you can go there and live. They’ll let you. But not Kathleen. She wouldn’t let him have his bone. Please, please go, Egan. Goodbye. I love you!”

It was the last time I ever talked with her. By the time I reached the hospital twenty minutes later, a sad-faced nurse told me Jazz had just died.

Now it’s almost three-thirty in the morning. I’ve looked at my world almanac and there it is—F-O-R-M-O-R-I.

I let Friend out more than three hours ago but he hasn’t returned. Neither has Kathleen.

The moon is extraordinarily bright. While standing in the open doorway a few minutes ago, I saw what must have been thousands and thousands of birds flying in strict, unchanging patterns over its calm, lit face.

I must decide soon.

I
USED TO SPEND
a lot of time at the Café Bremen. The coffee there is bitter and delicious and the teal-blue velvet seats are as comfortable as old friends. The large windows greet the morning light like Herr Ritter, the waiter, greets anyone who comes in.

You don’t have to order much; a cup of tea or a glass of wine. The croissants come from the bakery next door and are delivered twice a day. Late in the evening, the café bakes its own speciality for the night-owl customers—“Heavies”, which are a kind of sugar doughnut the size of a pocket-watch. A wonderful treat is to go in there late on a winter night and have a warm plate full of them.

The Bremen is open nineteen hours a day. The twenty-fourth of December is the only day of the year it’s closed, but on Christmas it opens again, wearing green and red tablecloths, full of people in bright new sweaters, or singles looking a little less lonely on a day when people should be home.

There are small, real pleasures in life—the latest issue of your favourite magazine, a fresh pack of cigarettes, the smell of things baking. You can have all of them in that café; you can be happy there without any of them.

I often went in to sit, look out of the window, and hum. A secret vice. My husband sneaks candy bars, my mother reads movie magazines, I hum. Give me a free hour with nothing to do and a good window to stare out of and I’ll gladly hum you all of Mahler’s Fifth or any song off the Beatles’
White Album.

I’m the first to admit I’m not very good at it, but humming is only meant for an audience of one, yourself, and anyone who eavesdrops does it at their own peril.

This happened on a late November afternoon when the whole town seemed one liquid glaze of reflected light and rain. A day in deep fall when the rain is colder than snow and everything feels meaner, harder edged. A day to stay inside and read a book, drink hot soup out of a thick white cup.

I’d decided to treat myself to the Bremen because I was beat. Arguing with the children, a trip to the dentist, then endless shopping for invisible things—toilet paper, glue, salt. Things no one ever knows are there until they’re gone and are then needed desperately. An invisible day where you exhaust yourself running around, doing thankless errands that are necessary but meaningless: the housewife’s oxymoron.

Walking in, wet and loaded down with bags, I think I groaned with joy when I saw my favourite table was empty. I flew to it like a tired robin to its nest.

Herr Ritter came right over, looking elegant and very nineteenth century in his black suit and bow tie, a white towel, as always, draped carefully over his arm.

“You look very tired. A hard day?”

“A nothing day, Herr Ritter.”

He suggested a piece of cream cake, damn the calories, but I ordered a glass of red wine instead. There was an hour before the kids would be home. An hour to let the knots inside slowly untie themselves while I looked out of the window and watched the now-romantic rain.

How long could it have been, two minutes? Three? Almost without knowing it, I’d begun to hum, but then from the booth behind someone gave a loud, long “Sssh!”

Embarrassed, I turned and saw an old man with a very pink face glaring at me.

“Not everyone likes Neil Diamond, you know!”

The perfect end to a perfect day: now I was on trial for humming “Holly Holy”.

I made an “excuse me” face and was about to turn around again when, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a number of photographs he had spread out on the marble table in front of him. Most of the pictures were of my family and me.

“Where did you get those?”

He reached behind him and, picking one up, handed it to me. Not looking at it, he said, “That is your son in nine years. He’s wearing a patch because he lost that eye in an automobile accident. He wanted to be a pilot, as you know, but one needs good eyesight for that, so he paints houses instead and drinks a lot. The girl in the picture is the one he lives with. She takes heroin.”

My son Adam is nine and the only thing that matters to him in the world is airplanes. We call his room “the hangar” because he’s covered every wall with pictures of “The Blue Angels”, the British “Red Arrows”, and the Italian “
Tricolore
” precision-flying teams. There are models and magazines and so many different airplane things in his room that it’s a little overwhelming. Recently he spent a week writing to all of the major airlines (including “Air Maroc” and “Tarom”, the national airline of Romania), asking what one has to do to qualify as a pilot for their company. Both my husband and I have always been both charmed and proud of Adam’s obsession, and have never thought of him as anything but a future pilot.

However, in the picture I held, our little boy with a crewcut and smart green eyes looked like a haggard eighteen-year-old panhandler.

The expression on his face was a bad combination of boredom, bitterness and no hope. It was obviously Adam in a few years, but a young man far past the end of his line, someone you’d either sneer at or move to avoid if you saw them approaching on the street.

And the eyepatch! Imagining the mutilation of our children is as wrenching and mysterious as the thought of them dead. None of that is ... allowed. It cannot
be.
And if, tragically, it does happen, then it is always our fault, no matter their age or the circumstances under which it happened. As parents, our wings must always be large enough to cover and protect them from hurt or pain. It is in our contract with God when we take on the responsibility of their lives. I remember so well the character in
Macbeth
who, on learning of the deaths of all his children, starts calling them “chicks”. “Where are all my little chicks? Where are they?” The sight of my son wearing an eyepatch on his face gave me the taste of blood in my mouth.

“Who are you?”

“Here’s another, of your husband after the divorce. He thinks that new moustache is very becoming. I think it looks a little dumb.”

My husband Willy has tried on and off for years to grow a moustache. Each one looked worse than the last. Once, in the middle of a very nasty fight, I said he always began one at the same time as he began an affair. That stopped them.