Best Boy (20 page)

Dr. Harris had wave-shaped hair and very white teeth. He laughed and said, “We can talk about that. In the meantime, let me show you the residential facilities, Mrs. Aaron. I think you'll be impressed.”

Momma held my hand as we walked around the green grass and white buildings that had people living in them in sunny rooms. I kept wanting to go sit in the side of the ocean and let the waves fall on me but Momma was tugging on my hand. “The point of Alta Borda is to provide a safe but stimulating environment for expanding the horizons of the disabled child,” Dr. Harris was saying. “I think you'll find we're truly a kids-first facility, with a teacher-student ratio that's among the best in the country.”

Momma seemed very impressed. She said, “This place is a breath of fresh air compared to the residential centers I've seen on the East Coast.”

But afterwards back in our hotel room before we went down to dinner she said, “That man was crazy, honey. I think he was
on something. He never stopped talking and did you notice how he looked at me?” She was adjusting my collar with little touches from up close and I could feel the warmth from the front of her body coming onto my neck and face.

“No,” I said happily.

Now it was many years later and I was running down the runway on a plane just like before but I was going back to where Momma had once lived and died instead of away from it. The plane sat at an angle in the sky for a while before it “leveled out” and the seat belt sign rang. I stopped remembering being a boy and took my seat belt off and stood up. My brother had made “special arrangements” with a flight attendant named Johannes who was suddenly right near me asking in a friendly voice, “Everything good?”

“I need to use the bathroom,” I said.

“Well, of course you do,” he said, and he pointed towards the part of the plane where the bathroom was.

The airplane bathroom was a small version of the same rooms that I like to stand in whenever I see them. Also, I pee a lot which is a side effect of the meds I take. Once a year I see Dr. Fleming the urologist. He always says, “How's the pipes?” and winks. In the little shaking bathroom of the plane I got most of it in the bowl though some might have also hit the floor. Then I made my way back to my seat and as I was sitting down the girl next to me looked up from her magazine. I looked back and said:

“Hello, Ma'am.”

The girl said something out of the side of her mouth to the girl next to her and they both laughed.

I shut my eyes and tried to remember the food they'd served me when I flew with my Momma. It was a kind of TV dinner
like we used to eat as boys from a foil tray with our family sitting in the light falling from the television. For lunch today Raykene had given me a paper bag that had a turkey sandwich in it along with a dill pickle and barbeque-flavored potato chips. I took my food out just as Johannes came by with a little rolling cart of drinks. He was very calm and friendly as he opened the tray in front of me to put the food on.

“Would you like some soda or tea or juice with that?” he asked.

“A Sprite, please.”

“Coming right up!”

I wanted a second extra pack of the peanuts that came with the drink and he gave it to me. I wanted the warm baked cookie they brought around after dinner and he gave me that too. Johannes kept coming by and I kept saying yes and eating and drinking. I ate while I drank a soda and an apple juice and then a cranapple juice and then three waters. I'm not sure how much time went by before the wheels rumbled as the whole plane slowly fell to earth and the tires spanked on the runway and we were somewhere new.

My brother was waiting in the crowd at the gate with his special gate pass in his hand. “Thanks so much, Johannes, I've got him from here,” he said past my ear as he hugged me.

Johannes said, “Of course. And he was a real gentleman.”

“Of course he was,” said my brother and hugged me close while I made my special smile and he kept one arm wrapped around my shoulder as we walked down the giant hall to his car. “Tubesteak in the house!” he yelled over the sound of all the many people moving, and squeezed me to him as we got on the elevator. Soon we were in his car and leaving the airport on a long curved road that made a hand of gravity press into us from the side before we got on the highway. We stayed on that
for a few minutes and then took a side road which ran straight past Roma Pizza and the House of Deli and also Rhonda's Hair and the Square Deal Hardware Store and now I knew where I was. I kept turning my head again and again to watch the places as they came out of my memory a second before they became actual buildings, and shot past us.

“You're acting like a guy just out of prison,” Nate said and laughed.

We passed the Rudge Road Elementary School. We passed the Squahosset Reservoir and the A&P. I could hear my breath beginning to go in and out like it did when I was excited because we were turning now onto the hill leading to the house where I'd been born and lived. Soon we were climbing and I was remembering the exact feeling of the hill inside my body and because of that a big wave came over me like when you're about to throw up except it wasn't painful but was filled with something else.

“Drumroll, please,” said Nate as we began going past the house that was my house and fit exactly into the place in my head where I remembered it. A different car was in the driveway. The color of the house was different. The trees and shrubs were different also. But the doors and windows made the same face at me they always had and I did what I'd always done as a boy: I made my own face back.

“You look like you got gas,” said my brother, turning to look at me.

“No,” I said.

“Pace yourself,” he said, as we went past several more houses on the hill and then we pulled into a driveway, “because it's a long visit.”

“Your house,” I said.

“My house,” Nate said, turning the car off. There was a
moment of silence. The car ticked. Into the silence he said in a softer voice:

“And now it's yours as well.”

I wanted to be happy but the lawn of the house was shaped like a green loaf that the face of the house might be eating with indigestion. Our own house down the block always had the face of a happy giant but Nate's house frightened me. I was still looking out the window feeling afraid to move when the front door of the house opened and my brother's wife Beth came falling out of it with the two children behind her.

“Hi!” said Beth.

It was the second time I'd seen her in my life and she was wearing the same dress that hung straight down from her shoulders. Her hair that used to be black was now light-colored and cut in the shape of an upside-down wooden salad bowl like the ones that were made in Payton woodshop on a machine called a
lathe
.

“Welcome!” she shouted.

“Hello,” I said, getting out of the car and looking at her instead of the house.

The boys came up behind her. They were now eleven and twelve and wearing shorts. Their legs were thin and they had large heads. They leaned their heads together.

“Hi, Uncle Todd!” they yelled.

“You made it!” said Beth in a surprised voice as she walked forward and puffed air in my ear for a kiss: “Mwah!” She stood in front of me and smiled while the lids of her eyes slowly closed and opened.

“It's been a while since you were here and we're just
so
glad you've come,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said. But I was finding it hard to have this
conversation because I wanted to drop everything and run away from the scowling face of this house and down the block to the house I'd been born in and somehow push my body into it and be eaten by it.

“You're tall,” said one of the boys and the other one elbowed him in the ribs.

Nate leaned forward and kissed his wife. Then he said, “Shall we?” He pulled out my suitcase and all of us walked into his house.

It was very big inside. Maybe I'd forgotten how big houses were that people lived in or I'd never known in the first place. Also, it didn't look like our house at all. I stopped and looked up. Directly over my head were two more floors filled with heavy furniture and hanging curtains and water draining into pipes and all this was falling down as hard as it could while the ceiling pushed back against it. The silent strain inside the house made me anxious suddenly and my stomach began to hurt. I breathed deep and tried to “pop the cork.”

My brother was looking at me carefully. “Steady on,” he said, “we'll get you set up upstairs in a jiffy.” I was going to say something back but at that moment there was a sound. It was a clicking thumping sound. It was the sound of a large dog throwing its weight against the basement door. The dog began to bark.

“The dog!” I said.

“Kirby is a friendly dog,” said one of the boys.

The dog made a roaring sound.

“Let me take you to your room now,” my brother said quickly and grabbed me by the elbow and began walking me up the stairs which were carpeted and attached to the house in some special way so that when you stepped on them you could feel everything shake a little.

“Flying is hard on the body,” he said as we got to the top of
the stairs while he held my luggage off the floor with one hand. “Take a load off, why don't ya,” he said, “and go wash your face and lie down and listen to some music or something for a while. Did you bring your radio?”

“Yes.”

“Of course you did. Just set yourself up and hang out up here for a bit and relax. We can meet downstairs when you're ready and I'll make the official, uh, interspecies introductions.”

He was talking fast again. I liked when he talked fast even if it usually meant he was telling me something that would make me unhappy or scared. He hugged me again very hard like I like it and then he left. I couldn't hear the dog anymore. To not hear him even better I took my radio out of my suitcase and set it up by the side of the bed and turned it on.

I wanted this to look like my bedroom from childhood which had a dark wooden floor and was painted dark green. But this room was cloud-colored and white and gray. Also the view out the window wasn't of the tops of trees that brushed the air like from my bedroom but of the brown side of another house. I shut my eyes against that difference in the houses and pressed the button that made the radio move through its channels. Several stations of people talking went by along with a country music station and a classical station and stations in maybe Spanish and other languages. I kept my finger on the button till I found the oldies station finally but they were giving a long weather report so I turned off the radio and lay in bed for a while feeling my body still traveling on the plane and moving forward inside itself. For a few minutes I shut my eyes and felt this flying feeling. A while later I opened my eyes and walked back down the stairs that shook.

The boys were sitting on the couch in the living room trying
to balance pencils on their noses and my brother and his wife were somewhere else in the house so I walked quickly across the living room and opened the door and stepped out onto the front lawn. Because we lived near the top of the hill where the wind blew hard I sometimes believed as a boy that all I had to do was move an arm or a hand to be lifted into the air and then carried away like a bird. Even looking down the big hill at things felt like you were flying towards them.

Very faintly now as I continued standing on the front lawn I could hear the high school marching band on the football field below the house. I couldn't see them but I knew they were there. The wind might have changed because the music suddenly got louder. I extended my arms until they were all the way out so that more of me could touch more air. I was closer to the woods and houses and streets of my childhood than I'd been in years. My eyes were open very wide and I stood on the lawn, turning slowly in place with my arms out, waiting for a puff of wind to lift me off the ground so that I could maybe float back over my house, looking down.

“Todd!” my brother was calling me from the front door. I saw him looking around nervously. Then he smiled in a strange way. “Would you mind, uh, coming back in the house now?”

“Okay.” I walked back into the house.

“I thought you were upstairs snoozing or something,” he said when I got back inside. “I didn't know you were helicoptering on the front lawn.”

“Our neighborhood!” I said. Then I didn't know what to say next.

“Yes, it is, but I think the Fensterwalds are the only ones left of the people who were here when we arrived. Everyone else has fluttered off or died. Remember Frankie?”

“Frankie worked on his car a lot,” I said.

His wife had come up behind him. “Does he know?” she said quietly.

“Frankie met an unfortunate end,” said my brother.

“Ohhhh,” I said.

“He was driving his motorcycle fast and rounded a blind curve, and, well, that was kinda all she wrote.”

“Dad?” It was Cam, who'd come quietly into the room. He was standing alone against the furniture and I realized he was twice the size of the last time I'd seen him. He had a large watch on one of his wrists. “Can we show him the dog?”

Immediately I felt the tightening in my stomach.

“Sure,” said Nate, “we might as well get this over with. Find your brother, will you?”

The boy ran off as my stomach gripped tighter.

“Relax,” said my brother. “I wouldn't do this if I thought there was any problem in the least with dear old Kirbs.”

But there was a problem. It was the same problem there always was. The problem was that just like cats or bunnies, dogs were also people. They were people with distorted long ears and long noses and pointed big teeth in their mouths who had been crushed into strange bodies and forced to bark horribly instead of talking but they were still people.