The Woman Who Married a Cloud: The Collected Short Stories (57 page)

So no, I wasn’t aware of anything special happening either to my husband or our life until I discovered what he was doing.

Look, we’d been married for eleven years. Live that long with someone and you just simply stop paying attention to certain things at a certain point. Isn’t that what happens to most couples, no matter how much you love your partner? Their curly hairs in the sink, the stories they repeat for the hundredth time, the way they sometimes eat with their mouth open. We know all these things and either accept them, ignore them, or force ourselves to tolerate them because they’re all part of the lifetime meal we chose to share with a partner. Not everything in marriage is dessert.

I found out about it because of the camera. He’s not usually a sloppy guy. You should know that. He doesn’t leave things lying around, especially if they’re fragile or valuable, like that camera. He’s not careless. His books and records are alphabetized; he likes things clean and in place. So did he leave it out like that so I’d find it? Sometimes I think so.

I’m sorry. I’m getting off track.

One Saturday when I was alone in the apartment I walked into the living room and on the coffee table was a small black and silver digital camera I’d never seen before. It was a beautiful thing. A GLIB, made in Germany. Who did that belong to? It was a point and shoot camera and simple to figure out how to work. So I turned it on and scrolled through the pictures that had been taken. There were about a dozen in there. All of them were either photos of different kinds of scaffolding, or high views of the city. Pictures that could only have been taken from way above the ground.

Alan came in an hour later and I asked where this camera came from. Very nonchalantly he took it and said it belonged to one of his clients who’d left it at the office after a meeting. He was going to call the man later to tell him he had it. I said I’d looked at the pictures in there and Alan shrugged. He asked what they were of and what I thought of them. I said most were of scaffolding, which wasn’t terribly exciting. He smiled and asked what had I expected to see. I said oh, I don’t know—maybe a little filth?

That was the end of that. He dropped the camera into his pocket and I didn’t see it again for a long time. Weeks I guess, and by then there were a lot more pictures inside.

He didn’t act strange. Once in a while he’d leave for work in the morning wearing clothes that didn’t seem right. They were casual clothes, no tie or suit as usual. When I asked about them, he said he didn’t have to be in court that day and was just going to the office to take care of paperwork.

Look, I know it sounds defensive, but we have our lives. We have our own concerns and schedules. So long as nothing interferes with them, we don’t think much about what our partner is doing during a day. Especially after you’ve been together for years. Maybe when we were first married I’d stop what I was doing in the middle of the morning and wonder what is my husband doing right now. But “husband” was the brand new delicious word in my vocabulary back then and I couldn’t get enough of saying it. Stuff like that gets sanded away over the years. I was just grateful I still really liked seeing him at the end of every day; that we still had things to share and talk about. I don’t know what happy is but I think we were happy. So many of our friends had divorced or lived in the same space but didn’t say two words to each other for days. It was not like that with Alan and me. It really wasn’t. We still sat together most evenings and talked instead of watching television or going our separate ways after dinner. We did things together. We looked forward to weekends and holidays when it would be just the two of us. I’m not trying to sound defensive or make excuses, please know that. I loved him, but maybe more importantly, I truly
liked
him and still enjoyed being around him.

Everyone has their secrets, but so long as they don’t affect your partner, what’s the harm?

Until he discovered the scaffolding, Alan Harris had no secrets. From time to time he masturbated, picked his nose, or told mild lies. But those things were not secrets as far as he was concerned because he assumed everyone did them. To him a secret was something you hid from the world because it was repellent and uniquely yours, thus something you really did not want people to know. At 42, he didn’t care what people knew about him because he honestly felt he had nothing to hide. He liked his wife and didn’t cheat on her. He liked his life enough so that he didn’t daydream often about another one. He had enough money so that when he saw something he wanted, he bought it. But there wasn’t much that he wanted. He was not a contented man so much as a comfortable one and that was sufficient for him. He was a lawyer. Lawyers are on good terms with compromise.

One morning he was looking out the window of his office while talking on the telephone. He noticed that construction was starting on the dilapidated building across the street. A large crew of workers was just beginning to sort, assemble and erect metal scaffolding that would soon rise from the street and eventually cover the façade of the building like an exoskeleton. And when that was erected, restoration on the building itself would begin in earnest.

Two red flatbed trucks with attached cranes unloaded huge tightly wrapped piles of scaffolding segments. Once unbound, they were then handed up piece by piece to the workers on the different levels. It pleased Harris to watch the process as it always did when he saw this happening. It meant people were employed, buildings were being renovated (“healed” was the word that often came to his mind when he witnessed this), and the result was another small breath of new life was being breathed into the city he liked so much.

“What are you looking at?”

His secretary had come into the office long after he had hung up the phone but remained at the window, watching them work across the street.

“I love to watch when they put up scaffolding. Did you ever see them do it, the process?”

She joined him at the window where they remained companionably silent a while, watching the action down below. Metal pieces changed hands. Tools were used; instructions shouted which they couldn’t hear way up here through the thick double-paned glass. Eventually the secretary half-smiled, shrugged and left. Harris felt a small pinch of anger at her indifference or insensitivity, whatever it was. How could she not be interested in this? How could she not appreciate what a cool thing it was? Men at work on something that would help lift the face of the neighborhood. Skilled at their jobs, they knew exactly what to do, what tools to carry in their wide leather belts, what section to call down for. He wondered what the names for the separate pieces were. Did they know them by number—give me a number eight? Or were there specific names—strut, crossbar, clamp?

That evening he worked till eight. He was tired and hungry and fed up with the paperwork on a case that was going nowhere but filled up too much of his time. That was one of the problems with the law—there were such a variety of twists and turns in it that you could walk through its mazes for years and still never find the exit. That was good for his law firm because they billed by the hour. But for the individual no end in sight wasn’t much of an incentive to come to work in the morning. While tiredly pulled on his overcoat he again thought of the scaffolding and the men who put it up. They knew exactly when a job would be finished. Put it up, take it down, and then move on to the next place. Their daily life was full of beginning, middle and end. A cynic would say yeah sure, but it’s grunt work and any dummy could do it. Still, on nights like these Harris envied them, whether they were dummies or not. Working outside all day, they finished at five and after washing their hands they climbed back down into the city they were helping to heal. They went with their pals to a bar where they had a few drinks and chatted, knowing they had done a good day’s work and that they would be finished with it next week.

It was cold outside and he hiked up his collar. On purpose he had left his briefcase back in the office because he knew that if he brought it home, he would work there too and a man needs some rest. Standing on the sidewalk in front of his building, he tried to decide whether to get something to eat before going home or pick something up on the way and eat it in the kitchen. He smiled when he thought of sitting at the kitchen table and opening a white Styrofoam container full of tasty still warm take-out food. He pictured his wife bringing him a bottle of cold Mexican beer from the refrigerator and then sitting down opposite him, happy that he was home and hers again. While these things filled his mind he unconsciously stared at the construction site. Without any more thought, he looked both ways and when the coast was clear, walked across the street so that he could take a closer look at the work in progress.

Standing underneath and looking up, he couldn’t see much because it was so dark and what scaffolding had been erected cut the gloom up there with metal and wood cross-hatching. Harris crossed to the nearest platform and put his hand on one of the poles. As he did, a large truck rumbled past on the street nearby and he could feel it vibrate through the metal. When the truck had passed he kept his hand where it was because it felt right there. For a few moments he felt more grounded than he had all day. Closing his eyes, he tightened his grip on the pole. Two people walked past, talking. He could hear them close by but didn’t open his eyes.

Later at home, he considered telling his wife about the experience but didn’t. Not because he wanted to keep it a secret. Not because he didn’t want her to know. He knew she would be delighted to hear the story because it was so unlike him to do something as odd and spontaneous as that. Stand still on a sidewalk with his eyes closed holding onto a metal bar for no reason other than he felt like it? That was not her husband. She would have loved hearing the story for that very reason. But he just didn’t mention it.

The next day at work was a rotten one. When he left the office even later than the night before, Harris walked straight over to the construction site and repeated the gesture. Only this time it was a conscious move and not a whim. Closing his eyes and taking hold of the same metal support pole, he silently asked for some of the energy of the men who had worked here today. He asked that it enter his body and revive his heart or wipe him clean of the sludge or ... something.

No dice. No lightning bolts or electric currents raced up his arm and into his soul. The pole remained a cold pole in his hand until he sheepishly let go of it and smiled at his own silliness. As he was about to leave, he heard someone directly above him singing the song “Home on the Range.” When he looked up, he saw a pair of big black boots descending near him. A big black man was wearing them. He wore a puffy down jacket and a yellow hard hat. He had a nice deep voice. Dropping from the scaffolding above Harris, the man stopped singing as soon as his feet touched ground.

“Hey there, how you doing?”

Alan smiled and dipped his head in a shy hello. “Fine. I’m just fine.”

“I’ll tell you, it’s getting damned cold up there. Fall’s definitely coming.” The man rubbed his hands together and grinned.

Alan pointed directly up. “Is it really colder up there than it is on the ground?”

The worker considered the question before answering. “It can be. Especially when the wind is blowing. You wanna go up and see?”

“Now?”

“Sure. It’s beautiful up there now. You see all the lights of the city. It looks like a chest full of golden diamonds. Come on, I’ll have you up and down in half an hour.”

It turned out to be the most wonderful thing he had done in ages. The worker’s name was Lyle Talbot and he was simply a great guy. Alan couldn’t figure out why Lyle invited him to climb the scaffolding. But eventually as they worked their way up, talking all the way, it became perfectly clear that this man just liked showing off the view from way up high. It was that uncomplicated and generous. Let me show you something special.

Alan had no fear of heights but as they climbed and climbed, some of the pieces of the structure were wobblier or more unstable than others. Several times his stomach clenched suddenly in fear at a missed step, a loose plank, or one that felt like it was about to give way. Lyle didn’t hesitate or look down once. When he wasn’t talking to Alan he sang “Home on the Range” quietly under his breath.

“Stop here.” They were about halfway up. Lyle reached into one of the large pockets on his coat and brought out a small silver thermos. “Let’s have a little sip of hot coffee. It’ll warm up our bones. You cold?”

Alan was too enthralled to be cold. From that vantage point the city was overpoweringly beautiful. It flickered, shimmered and twinkled all at once. The noise from down on the street was a constant heartening hum of motion and electric life. The wind blew at them in cold sudden, invigorating gusts. Lyle was exactly right when he said before that all the lights looked gold. Of course many were different colors—blue, red, white. But the predominant color was gold. Gold against the black of night. And none of them stayed still—the lights constantly blinked and fluttered, they flicked on and off or moved. Alan only wished he had a camera. He would have filled it with pictures of everything.

There was only the one cup that doubled as the top of the thermos, so the men passed it back and forth between them, sharing the strong hot drink.

When it was gone, Lyle slowly screwed the top back onto the thermos and asked Alan if he was ready to go back down. It was really cold now and the wind had picked up in the last few minutes. Craning his head straight back, Alan looked toward the levels above them. Part of him wanted to keep climbing but he knew it was time to go home.

“Yes I’m ready. And Lyle, thank you so much for inviting me. It’s been magical. Really. Looking at the city from here is so different than out the window of an office building. It’s like the difference between riding on a motorcycle or in a car. Up here with nature in your face, the wind and the cold, you feel like you’re flying above everything, but like a bird on your own wings. The wind’s lifting and dropping you ... It’s just great.”