Above The Thunder (21 page)

“Well, I have. You and I both have. We were neighbor wives in Montana. You kept cows and chickens. I baked pies and took in laundry. Between us we had eleven children. One of them was Poppy, who was my daughter. She was unhappy then, too. Even then she was mentally ill. She was a deaf-mute, I think. She could see spirits and the next world the way you and I can.”

Anna stopped. She’d learned to ignore a lot of Flynn’s flights of fancy. Despite what Marvin said, she didn’t see anything so alarming about the girl imagining other lifetimes. Millions of people worldwide believed in reincarnation. It didn’t seem so farfetched. Anna wasn’t sure
she
didn’t believe in it. What was most troubling was Flynn’s fascination with death and dying. This is what stopped Anna short and gave her a chill of doom. Her
solution for now was to ignore anything unusual in Flynn’s speech or behavior. Though it wasn’t always easy.

A few days ago, Anna had come home from work and tripped over her granddaughter, who was lying in the middle of the floor, wrapped completely and tightly in a bed sheet. Only her eyes peeked out, over which there were two shiny pennies. Anna kept her voice level. “What are you doing, Flynn?”

“Trying to remember what it was like when I was a pharaoh. Dying for so long, taking forever to return to dust.” Anna kept the alarm out of her voice as best she could. “Get up and wash your face before dinner.”

She looked over at Flynn now, still going on about other lifetimes. In a minute Flynn would circle the conversation back to Poppy, Anna knew. This was what she was learning about the way Flynn’s mind worked. Reincarnation, followed by worry about her mother, followed by fear of abandonment.

“Which would you rather,” Anna began, starting the game she’d invented to short-circuit Flynn’s imaginative embroideries. “Would you rather be a chicken or a superhero?”

Flynn eased herself up onto one elbow. “What are the conditions?”

“You’re in a chicken coop in Wisconsin. But you have a secret destiny and a secret map to a distant galaxy. If you can make it, you turn into a talented woman who can rule the universe. As a superhero, you can have the power now. The power is to be invisible anywhere.”

“Easy. I’d try to get to the galaxy.”

There were little pockets of mysteries in Flynn, things Anna didn’t yet know like this one; the girl was probably brave. Maybe very brave, who knew.

“Which would you rather: would you rather be a fig tree or a whale?”

“What are the conditions?”

“As a fig tree you are beautiful and have millions of yummy figs all over you. But you can’t eat them, and you can’t move. You have to wait for someone to come by. As a whale, you have the whole ocean. Your whale family is all over the world and you spend most of your day lonely and having to look for food. But you are the boss and are huge and can do whatever you want, including killing fishermen in boats.”

“Fig tree. I would always prefer to bear fruit.”

“Even if no one sees you? If you’re a forgotten fig tree in the middle of the desert?”

“Especially,” Anna said, surprising herself.

“Would you rather speak the truth and have no one believe you, or tell a bunch of lies that you know aren’t true, but which make people like you?” Flynn asked.

“Speak the truth.”

“Always? Even if people told you that you were a freak and you had no friends and you would maybe die because you were honest?”

“That’s a tough one. I’ll have to get back to you on that.”

Anna heard Marvin’s heavy footsteps in the hallway just outside the bedroom. “Flynnie?”

“Yesie?” Flynn called back.

“Your bath is ready. Let’s get moving.”

“Where are we going?”

Anna sighed, exasperated. “Why can’t you and your father hold a conversation in the same room? It would mean you wouldn’t have to shout like this.”

Marvin knocked and came in when Anna said it was all right. “Let’s go, sweet beet.”

“Where are we going?”

“First we’re going to take the bus into the garage. When and if it’s done in time, we have an appointment to look at an apartment.”

“You do?” Anna asked. Marvin being who he was, Anna hadn’t anticipated that the question of living arrangements would come up again unless she said something.

“Why?” Flynn asked. “Isn’t this our home?”

Anna rushed in. “Tell you what. Forget all that for now. Why don’t you and Flynnie take a break? I have to be at the hospital to help run a group, but you can drop me off and use my car for the day.”

She couldn’t read Marvin’s look. Some mixture of curiosity, triumph, and suspicion. “
The Little Mermaid
is playing at a theater near where I have to be.”

“Oh, far out! Groovy and wavy gravy, baby,” Flynn said. She adjusted her goggles and navigated to the bathroom with 20/400 vision. There was an invisible Seeing Eye dog that went with this setting. His name was
Jumbo. He wagged and huffed in front of her, always stepping out of the way just in time.

Marvin looked back at Anna, who shrugged. “Why not?” Anna said. “Stay a few more weeks. I’m just getting to know Flynn.”

“Are you sure? Because that would be fabulous. I have two job interviews this week. In a month my finances will be much better.”

“Job interviews? Really?” She sat up, ran a comb through her hair.

“Just adjunct teaching gigs at community colleges, but they’ll pay the bills.”

“Groovy,” Anna said, and flashed a peace sign. “Wavy gravy, baby.”

Marvin laughed. “Isn’t she something?”

Anna said, “Indeed.” She looked through her closet for something to wear. Nothing seemed right today. She wanted to dress a little nicer than she usually did, since this Saturday was her last as the official co-leader of the group. Nick had found an intern to step in. Finally. And as promised, her lab was outfitted with not only state-of-the-art microscopes, but also a new centrifuge, and rare specimen slides of the Hantavirus, monkey pox, and both stages of rabies. She wasn’t sorry that her duties were over, but she would miss the perks that went along with Nick’s gratitude.

She searched for something bright. Color helped to keep her alert when she hadn’t slept well. The red Missoni jacket was elegant, but red was always wrong for meetings like this. Too inflammatory, too bloody and gladiatorial. She finally opted for her long-stored pink suit. Only in the car, when it was too late to change, did it occur to her that she was over-dressed. She’d been thinking only of color.

There were conditions, and the two of them were not a couple, Stuart had insisted to Jack and to himself. It was strictly out of human charity that Stuart agreed to let Jack move back in after being released from the hospital. He had very nearly died, pneumonia compromising his respiratory system to the point where his lungs had collapsed three times. Jack’s stay was temporary, just until he stabilized. In the meantime, one of the conditions was that he attend a support group. “I don’t need a support group,” Jack had said.

“Well, I do,” Stuart said. In truth, the support group
was
for Jack, for the time when he needed friends and people to care for him.

The two of them walked into the meeting fifteen minutes late, into a group of dying fags and pathetic, afflicted breeders, by Jack’s lights. Jesus in Japan, this was going to be without end. They were in the dayroom of the psychiatric wing, a strange space filled with scraggly geraniums and stained furniture. The walls were dingy, yellowish from the good old days when they let the loonies light up. The upholstery and carpets smelled faintly of stale tobacco. Jack wished smoking were still permitted, not because he wanted to, but because at least here, in a room full of the dying, they should all be allowed to abandon the absurd illusion of health.

Because Jack and Stuart were late, the only empty chairs faced into the circle. He would have much preferred to face the window so the sun was in his eyes and everyone around him was in varying degrees of shadow. If not for the obvious hell of dying alone in substandard housing—well, anything less than Egyptian cotton bedding and cut-pile Saxony carpets was substandard, wasn’t it?—Jack would have refused this condition, the absurd weepy woe-is-me gut-spilling collection of sorry asses. He’d have probably won on this one, since it was the Hector issue that was the biggie. At the time he’d been so sick that he gave into everything on Stuart’s list, the main three items being to cease all contact with other men; to respect Stuart’s home by cleaning up after himself; and to attend a support group meeting. There were two meetings, Stuart had told him, one more informal than the other, which did Jack prefer? He chose Saturday.

He’d have to make a deal with Stuart, because he would not come here again. The fag hags were bad enough, the single women in their thirties who worked in hip professions like advertising or internet consulting and came with their Best Gay Friend Who Was Like A Brother! But the place was being overrun by breeders, like the pair coming in now, a fiftyish woman in a pink Chanel-type suit and a drop-dead gorgeous man, probably her son. He wore a wedding band, though these days that didn’t mean much. She was a tough broad, he saw right away. Her eyes made no apologies as she scanned the room for chairs, her power suit and jewelry like a banner of her wealth and superiority. At least the fag hags dressed the part of liberal free spirits in long gypsy skirts and loose-fitting blouses of unbleached cotton. To look at the group, Jack thought now, you’d think the whole sorry lot of them aspired to tour with Fleetwood Mac. But this bitch, the mother of Mr. Beautiful—the thought that she might be his wife
was too horrific to consider; if it turned out to be true, Jack would bloody her nose in the parking lot—moved around the room and rearranged chairs like she owned the place. Jack was aware of Stuart’s eyes on him as he checked out the new gorgeous man—beautiful bone structure, bright dark eyes and silky ponytailed hair that he knew must smell of something wonderful like sandalwood or bay rum. Jack tried to keep his expression neutral. He cut his eyes away.

“Sorry I’m late, gang,” Anna said.

Ballsy, Jack thought. He glared at the pink-suited woman. What arrogance. The diamond ring on her finger could light planes to the runway.

The young group facilitator, a social worker who looked fresh out of someplace like Emerson College was calling the meeting to order. She meant well, Jack knew, but nevertheless with her fresh-scrubbed farmgirl face looked as if she’d never put her lips around anything stronger than cherry popsicles. “I count four new faces today. So let me welcome you to the Mood Team,” she started. “I’m Christine, and I’ve been working with AIDS patients and their families for ten years.”

Jack snorted. “Ten years? Did you start in junior high school?”

Christine ignored him. “And I’d like to introduce our co-leader, Anna Brinkman, who has worked in the health care industry for thirty years.”

“Now
that
I believe,” Jack said.

Anna turned to look at the man who had spoken. He was handsome, with bright greenish-brown eyes that looked a little glazed with fever. His partner—at least that’s who Anna assumed the cherubic-faced man was—looked sad and defeated. Nick had told her and Christine that because the virus often attacked the brain first, dramatic changes in mood or personality could be one of the earliest symptoms of AIDS. Anna suspected that wasn’t the case with this man; the lines around his mouth and forehead were too deeply set for displeasure and fury to be something new.

He returned Anna’s gaze with a look of such pure hatred that her heart skipped a beat. His eyes took in her suit, her shoes. She looked away. She wished she’d dressed differently. What had she been thinking? She looked like somebody’s Francophile grandma. She was even wearing Chanel No. 5, for God’s sake.

“Just a few things before we start,” Christine said. “I’ve planned a dance for next Saturday, ballroom and swing. The Mood Swings, which I’m
hoping to make a regular bi-monthly event. So, come even if you don’t know how to do swing or ballroom. Especially if you don’t. I’m hoping somebody in the group will volunteer to teach the basic steps, so if someone has expertise in any area of formal dance, please see me after class.”

“I can foxtrot and tango.”

Jack turned. It was the gorgeous newcomer, sitting just two seats away from him now. Jack had never seen such perfect cheekbones, smooth and high and sculpted, without the shadowy hollows beneath or the underslung lower jaw that often went with such a face. Jack thought about a trip to Florence, the first time he laid eyes on Michelangelo’s
David
. His initial impression was the artist must have executed his masterpiece from some imaginary ideal, that no ordinary mortal could have such perfectly symmetrical features. This man could have served as Michelangelo’s model. Or was it just his fever making the man into such delicious delirium? Jack felt the stirrings of desire, despite the sharp pains in his lungs, his weakness and aching muscles.

Anna turned to Marvin, glared at him. What was he doing? He was supposed to be a silent presence. When she caught his eye he smiled and shrugged. At the last minute, Flynn had changed her mind about seeing a movie and asked to spend the day with Greta instead. Marvin said he’d like to accompany her to the hospital to watch her work. She said yes, but only if he made himself invisible, which he hadn’t, which he clearly could never be.

“That’s great,” Christine said, and nodded to Marvin. “See me after the meeting. Also, as I mentioned last week, this is Anna’s last official meeting with us. We have an intern from Boston General coming aboard. So, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank her.”

The group applauded. Anna nodded, then motioned for Christine to carry on. “Okay, since we have some newcomers here, why don’t we start by introducing ourselves and saying a little bit about why we’re here.”

Anna let her attention wander during the introductions—now from Edward, a man in his fifties whose disease was full-blown. He reminded Anna a little of Nathan Lane, and he’d become one of her favorites; he was always in good spirits despite being recently dumped by his partner of twenty-five years. There was something almost epic in the equanimity with which he was facing this disease. Edward had worked as a civil rights attorney, and now had live-in help. Some days, the men’s illness penetrated
more deeply into her psyche than others. Most times, she could look at it philosophically, believe that her contribution to the whole process was to listen. But other times Anna felt like she couldn’t bear it, wanted to stay a few steps behind those who walked shoulder-to-shoulder with their own mortality every day. Then there were days, and today was threatening to become one of them, where she couldn’t get her mind around how horrible this all was. Not the disease so much, but the pariahs it made people into, the hate groups who targeted AIDS sufferers. On the windshield of her car two Saturdays ago was a pink handbill proclaiming “Jesus Hates Fags.” She could usually dismiss this kind of small-minded ignorance but only if she didn’t remember particular people like Edward. As long as she lived, she would never understand hate in the name of religion. Human beings were the only animals that judged other members of their species by qualities other than behavior or contribution. Elephants ostracized rogue cows. Chimps kicked out violent males. Wolves that didn’t adhere to the order and follow the pack leader were killed. Only the human animal killed or enslaved its own for the color of skin, sexual preference, or how it experienced the idea of a god.