Things that Fall from the Sky (Vintage Contemporaries)

Table of Contents

ACCLAIM FOR KEVIN BROCKMEIER’S

Things That Fall from the Sky

“Unique and spellbinding . . . Brockmeier is up to something different.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Lyrical. . . . Brockmeier is clearly a talent. The stories are filled with the kinds of metaphors that make you see the world afresh.” —
Shout

“There is magic at work here. Brockmeier combines a fearless, fantastic imagination with a warm heart, and the resulting stories are brimming with mystery, sadness, and moments of exquisite beauty.”

—Judy Budnitz, author of
If I Told You Once

“Brockmeier . . . achieves melancholy brilliance. . . .
Things
That Fall
is perfect for reading at bedtime, when the mind is most likely to accept Brockmeier’s invitations to strange, whimsical dreams, either waking or sleeping.” —
The Onion

“Brockmeier’s witty, bittersweet tales are reminiscent of the work of Steven Millhauser; his stories successfully combine sophistication with innocence, lyricism with simplicity, formal quirkiness with a straightforward emotional fervency.”

—Heidi Julavits, author of
The Mineral Palace

“A dazzling collection . . . tales as dense and textured as Flannery O’Connor’s.” —Arkansas Times

“May remind some readers of certain of the beautiful classic parables of Ray Bradbury.”

—Joyce Carol Oates, author of
We Were the Mulvaneys

“[A] mixture of fantasy, magic, and astonishing point of view . . . Brockmeier speaks a unique voice.”

—
Richmond Times-Dispatch

“Kevin Brockmeier’s stories are crystalline wonders. They are fairy tales: wise, magical and heartwrenching; fantastic, and also achingly real. They are breathtaking.”

—Thisbe Nissen, author of
The Good People of New York

KEVIN BROCKMEIER

Things That Fall from the Sky

Kevin Brockmeier is the author of
The Truth About Celia
and a children’s book,
City of Names
. He has published stories in
The Georgia Review
,
The Carolina Quarterly
, and
McSweeney’s.
His story “Space” from
Things That Fall from the Sky
has been selected for
The Best American Short Stories
, and his story “The Green Children” from
The Truth About Celia
has been selected for
The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror
. He has received the
Chicago Tribune
’s Nelson Algren Award, an Italo Calvino Short Fiction Award, a James Michener-Paul Engle Fellowship, two O. Henry Awards (one, a first prize), and most recently, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Books by Kevin Brockmeier

The Truth About Celia
Things That Fall from the Sky
City of Names

for my mom

Things That Fall from the Sky

In the fairy tale an incomprehensible happiness rests upon an incomprehensible condition. A box is opened, and all evils fly out. A word is forgotten, and cities perish. A lamp is lit, and love flies away. A flower is plucked, and human lives are forfeited. An apple is eaten, and the hope of God is gone.

—G. K. CHESTERTON

These Hands

The protagonist of this story is named Lewis Winters. He is also its narrator, and he is also me. Lewis is thirty-four years old. His house is small and tidy and sparsely furnished, and the mirrors there return the image of a man inside of whom he is nowhere visible, a face within which he doesn’t seem to belong: there is the turn of his lip, the knit of his brow, and his own familiar gaze: there is the promise of him, but where is he? Lewis longs for something not ugly, false, or confused. He chases the yellow-green bulbs of fireflies and cups them between his palms. He watches copter-seeds whirl from the limbs of great trees. He believes in the bare possibility of grace, in kindness and the memory of kindness, and in the fierce and sudden beauty of color. He sometimes believes that this is enough. On quiet evenings, Lewis drives past houses and tall buildings into the flat yellow grasslands that embrace the city. The black road tapers to a point, and the fields sway in the wind, and the sight of the sun dropping red past the hood of his car fills him with sadness and wonder. Lewis lives alone. He sleeps poorly. He writes fairy tales. This is not one of them.

The lover, now absent, of the protagonist of this story is named Caroline Mitchell. In the picture framed on his desk, she stands gazing into the arms of a small tree, a mittened hand at her eyes, lit by the afternoon sun as if through a screen of water. She looks puzzled and eager, as though the wind had rustled her name through the branches; in a moment, a leaf will tumble onto her forehead. Caroline is watchful and sincere, shy yet earnest. She seldom speaks, and when she does her lips scarcely part, so that sometimes Lewis must listen closely to distinguish her voice from the cycling of her breath. Her eyes are a miracle—a startled blue with frail green spokes bound by a ring of black—and he is certain that if he could draw his reflection from them, he would discover there a face neither foreign nor lost. Caroline sleeps face down, her knees curled to her chest: she sleeps often and with no sheets or blankets. Her hair is brown, her skin pale. Her smile is vibrant but brief, like a bubble that lasts only as long as the air is still. She is eighteen months old.

A few questions deserve answer, perhaps, before I continue. So then: The walls behind which I’m writing are the walls of my home— the only thing padded is the furniture, the only thing barred the wallpaper. Caroline is both alive and (I imagine—I haven’t seen her now in many days) well. And I haven’t read Nabokov—not ever, not once.

All this said, it’s time we met, my love and I.

It was a hopeful day of early summer, and a slight, fresh breeze tangled through the air. The morning sun shone from telephone wires and the windshields of resting cars, and high clouds unfolded like the tails of galloping horses. Lewis stood before a handsome dark-brick house, flattening his shirt into his pants. The house seemed to conceal its true dimensions behind the planes and angles of its front wall. An apron of hedges stretched beneath its broad lower windows, and a flagstone walk, edged with black soil, elbowed from the driveway to the entrance. He stepped to the front porch and pressed the doorbell.

“Just a minute,” called a faint voice.

Lewis turned to look along the street, resting his hand against a wooden pillar. A chain of lawns glittered with dew beneath the blue sky—those nearby green and bristling, those in the distance merely panes of white light. A blackbird lighted on the stiff red flag of a mailbox. From inside the house came the sound of a door wheeling on faulty hinges, a series of quick muffled footsteps, and then an abrupt reedy squeak.
Hello,
thought Lewis.
Hello, I spoke to you on the telephone.
The front door drew inward, stopped short on its chain, and shut. He heard the low mutter of a voice, like residual water draining through a straw. Then the door opened to reveal a woman in a billowy cotton bathrobe, the corner of its hem dark with water. A lock of black hair swept across her cheek from under the dome of a towel. In her hand she carried a yellow toy duck. “Yes?” she said.

“Hello,” said Lewis. “I spoke to you on the telephone.” The woman gave him a quizzical stare. “The nanny position? You asked me to stop by this morning for an interview.” When she cocked an eyebrow, he withdrew a step, motioning toward his car. “If I’m early, I can—”

“Oh!” realized the woman. “Oh, yes.” She smiled, tucking a few damp hairs behind the rim of her ear. “The interview. I’m sorry. Come in.” Lewis followed her past a small brown table and a rising chain of wooden banisters into the living room. A rainbow of fat plastic rings littered the silver gray carpet, and a grandfather clock ticked against the far wall. She sank onto the sofa, crossing her legs. “Now,” she said, beckoning him to sit beside her. “I’m Lisa. Lisa Mitchell. And you are—?”

“Lewis Winters.” He took a seat. “We spoke earlier.”

“Lewis—?” Lisa Mitchell gazed into the whir of the ceiling fan, then gave a swift decisive nod. “Aaah!” she lilted, a smile softening her face. “You’ll have to excuse me. It’s been a hectic morning. When we talked on the phone, I assumed you were a woman. Lois, I thought you said.
Lois
Winters. We haven’t had too many male applicants.” Her hand fluttered about dismissively as she spoke, and the orange bill of the rubber duck she held bobbed past her cheek. “This
would
seem to explain the deep voice, though, wouldn’t it?” She smoothed the sash of her bathrobe down her thigh. “So, tell me about your last job. What did you do?”

“I’m a storyteller,” said Lewis.

“Pardon?”

“I wrote—write—fairy tales.”

“Oh!” said Lisa. “That’s good. Thomas—that’s my husband, Thomas—” She patted a yawn from her lips. “Excuse me. Thomas will like that. And have you looked after children before?”

“No,” Lewis answered. “No, not professionally. But I’ve worked with
groups
of children. I’ve read stories in nursery schools and libraries.” His hands, which had been clasped, drew apart. “I’m comfortable with children, and I think I understand them.”