8. July 1992“And suddenly I saw the heavens unfastened and open.”“That one’s far from home.”
JULY 1992
“AND SUDDENLY I SAW THE HEAVENS UNFASTENED AND OPEN.”
N ine days closer to William’s seventeenth birthday. Nine days closer to when he would embark with Frank on a three-week albacore tuna-fishing trip. One hundred and fifty miles offshore, all the way to the warm water edge. That far out, the stars would float above them in full relief, undimmed by the city lights. Meteors would streak through the Milky Way’s arms, so vivid that it seemed they might crash into Uncle Frank’s outriggers. And during the day, they might even see blue whales.
Or an albatross.
In the sanctuary of his bedroom, William had begun writing poems again. And on Sunday, after the usual family dinner, he and Mike had indulged in a mini jam session. For the first time in nearly two years, lyrics flew freely from his pen and melodies from his guitar, while Mike supported on bass. They riffed for hours without breaks, knowing it was only a matter of time until their mother yelled at them to pull the plug; their father was trying to sleep. And they both knew that trying to sleep was code for passed out drunk on the sofa.
But the poems... those were still private. Those were just for William. And maybe, one day, he would share them with his grandmother. After all, she was the one who had freed the poète maudit from its cage.
Watching Mike pack up his bass guitar, William suddenly blurted, “Can you draw me an albatross?”
Mike’s hand froze with the guitar case halfway shut, his head swiveling to gape at William. “Can I what ? ”
As much of an idiot as Mike was in most respects, there was no denying his artistic talent. He had never received nor needed any formal training. It was like he sprang from the womb, a fully-formed Leonardo da Vinci.
In the artistic department, anyway. Definitely not in the genius department.
“Draw an albatross. For me.”
“What the fuck, man?” Mike emitted one of his cretinous laughs. “Where did that come from?”
To hide his burning cheeks, William went to stow his guitar case in the corner of his bedroom. “It came from the fact that I want you to draw an albatross for me. Standing with its wings spread, as if readying for flight. Can you do it or not?”
“Okay, clearly you’re going all Bruce Wayne on me here. Just promise to use my powers for good, not evil.”
William smirked, and didn’t tell Mike he would use it as a cover for his first book of poems. The one he would present to Nonna when he graduated from high school.
Now, today, it was Monday, and Nonna had asked William to bring home five salmon filets for supper. She knew Frank would bring in his catch that day, and that William would help him offload it. And since his parents worked later than he did, and his sister Kelly was away at some soccer camp, Nonna tasked him with bringing home the goods .
Now he strode home from the bus stop, the butcher paper-wrapped filets tucked under his arm like a football. The fog was so dense, it swallowed not just the sights, but even the sounds of the neighborhood.
He wasn’t sure what to credit for the extra spring in his step. Maybe it was just his inner poète maudit , finally liberated from its cage. It was a cage Jimmy had constructed for him, but he had finally realized that he was the only one keeping himself there.
Maybe it was the lingering buzz from jamming with Mike last night.
Or maybe it was the surprise of finding Julia Dunphy on the bus, just two rows in front of him, in the thrall of Pablo Neruda. Her lips silently formed the poet’s words as her eyes traced them over the page:
something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire
and wrote the first faint line,
faint without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom,
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open.
He still hadn’t worked up the nerve to speak to her. Besides, he hated it when anyone interrupted him , mid-Neruda.
His house finally came into view, emerging suddenly out of the fog. But even as he retrieved his key from his pocket, the hairs on the back of his neck prickled .
Something was wrong.
He knew it, even before he heard the smoke alarm. Even before he crossed the distance to the front door in a handful of long strides, and the acrid stench of something burning assailed his nostrils.
“Nonna?” he shouted over the relentless shriek of the alarm. He touched the doorknob – it was cool – then unlocked the front door as quickly as his shaking hands would allow.
The alarm’s wail intensified, as did the acrid smell. A haze of thin smoke billowed from the open door. Even over the alarm, a faint, almost spectral groan reached his ears from somewhere upstairs.
“Nonna!” Dropping his backpack in the foyer, dropping even the package of salmon, he sprinted upstairs, two at a time. The burning smell intensified, as did the moaning. His long legs propelled him through the living room and into the kitchen in three strides.
Supine on the kitchen floor, limbs sprawled. Eyes wide, mouth slack, a grotesque death mask. Drool streaming from one corner of her mouth, pooling on the linoleum.
“Nonna!”
His shriek pinballed around inside of his head, the voice unrecognizable even to himself. As he fell to his knees, her eyes slowly slid over and locked and with his. An unnatural groan ripped from her throat, and to his horror, he realized she was fully alert and aware.
“Nonna! What’s the matter?” He snatched one of her hands and squeezed, willing her to squeeze back. But she didn't. “Nonna, please, say something!” But she only stared. Somehow, he instinctively knew she was trying to stay brave for him. Trying to reassure him with her eyes.
Tears gushed down his cheeks. “Nonna... tell me what to do!”
She groaned louder, her eyes sliding in the direction of the stove. That’s when the burning smell returned to the forefront, and he understood. Springing to his feet, he flipped the knob on the stove, extinguishing the burner. The pan above it contained the charred, smoking remnants of whatever she had been cooking. It was unrecognizable now. Quickly deciding it wouldn’t catch fire, he didn’t waste any more time on it – he returned to squat at his grandmother’s side .
“It’s okay, Nonna; I turned off the burner. I’m going to call 911.”
She only stared at him, unable to even nod. Springing to his feet again, he snatched the receiver from the wall-mounted phone and spun the three digits on the agonizingly-slow rotary dial.
“Come on, come on, come on...”
With the receiver still pressed to his ear, he returned to Nonna’s side, the coiled phone cord stretching to accommodate the short distance.
“911, please state your–”
“My nonna – I don’t know – she’s on the floor and I–”
“Sir, please slow down. Your what? ”
Nonna’s eyes were still locked on his, and it was like she was channeling messages straight into his brain: “Deep breaths, niputeddu miu. I’m okay. You’ve got this, my smart, capable boy.”
“Sir?” came the operator’s sharp voice. “I can’t hear you. If that’s a fire alarm, you should evacuate immediately.”
He burst to his feet again and ripped the smoke alarm from the ceiling, silencing it. “Nonna – my grandmother – something’s wrong,” he stammered into the phone. “She’s collapsed on the kitchen floor. She can’t move or talk. Please hurry.”
William kept his eyes locked with Nonna’s as the 911 operator dispatched help and talked him through a series of questions that he spluttered answers to.
Awake.
Breathing.
Alert.
Aware.
Oh God, she was aware of everything that was happening to her!
“Don’t worry, Nonna; you’ll be okay. The ambulance is coming. I’m here.”
“I’m already okay,” her eyes seemed to answer him. “You'll be okay, too.”
“No,” he choked out.
“Yes you will, and don’t you forget it. ”
“They’ll fix this.” He heard the sirens wailing now. “Nonna, I’m just going to roll up these dish towels and put them under your head–”
“Sir,” came the urgent voice on the other end of the line, “do not move her; she may have a spinal cord injury.”
Choking on an anguished sob, William fixed his eyes on Nonna’s again. “I’m just going to flag down the ambulance and let them in. It’ll only take a minute, okay? I’ll be right back.”
“Go on,” Nonna said with her eyes.
The next few minutes were a blur that William barely registered – first responders rushing upstairs, William trailing closely. As Nonna vanished into the center of a circle of paramedics, he snatched the rosary hanging on the kitchen wall. Hopefully loud enough for Nonna to hear over the commotion, he prayed.
I believe in God,
the Father almighty...
The ring of paramedics opened briefly, and he saw it – Nonna was moving!
No, wait, she wasn’t moving, she was–
Blessed art thou among women,
and blessed is the fruit of–
Snatches of words he didn’t understand, like myoclonus and tachy and hemorrhagic .
–thy womb.
Holy Mary, Mother of God–
A few he did understand, like seizing and airway and cardiac arrest .
pray for us sinners,
Now and at the hour of our –
I’m sorry, son. She’s gone.
An inhuman wail ripped the curtain dividing reality from nightmare – a wail he didn’t recognize as his own until he collapsed to his knees.
“Are you Catholic?”
The gruff voice beside him belonged to one of the paramedics. A middle-aged man with a dark mustache.
“Let's pray together for her, son.”
I commend you, my dear sister,
to Almighty God,
and entrust you to your Creator...
Only then did William remember – he had forgotten to tell her he loved her.
“THAT ONE’S FAR FROM HOME.”
Numbness.
After the wailing, praying, and crying, that's what rushed in to fill the void they had carved out – pure numbness.
His birthday came and went. So did Nonna’s funeral. Immediately after, William plunged headlong into a three-week trip with Frank, actually hoping to sweat and freeze and suffer – but all to no avail. Now, back on land, he remained firmly entrenched in the numbness.
On that horrible day one month ago, someone must have alerted Andy. He arrived at the same time as William’s distraught parents, followed quickly by a stunned Mike; then administered last rites before the coroner carried Nonna’s body from the house. He stayed to comfort an inconsolable Kelly, who hadn’t been able to get home quickly enough to say her goodbyes.
Andy had spoken at length to William, but his words sounded like a squawking trumpet – like the adults in a Charlie Brown TV special. A bunch of meaningless nonsense. Canned. Trapped .
Numb.
After William returned from his three-week fishing trip, Andy visited him again at home. This time, William heard more of the words.
Stages of grief.
Not your fault.
With the Lord.
At peace.
“Pray with me, Will.”
At those words, Andy snap-zoomed into focus. And that’s all it took to open the floodgates to the next stage of grief.
Rage .
William sprang to his feet, tipping the dining chair backward, his fists balling at his sides. Beside him, Andy flinched, eyes wide. William felt the crevasses forming in his forehead, and his teeth nearly shattered under the clench of his jaw.
“I prayed,” William seethed. “I prayed while she died surrounded by a bunch of strange men. I told her everything would be okay; but that was a lie. And not only were my last words to her a lie, I never once told her I loved her.”
Andy’s wary gaze softened, his shoulders lowering a bit. “She knew that, Will. She always did. Even if you’d had time to tell her, you didn’t need to.”
“But I did have time!” William spat out. “She was aware of everything, even though she couldn’t move or speak. She was on the kitchen floor with the smoke alarm blaring in her ear, wondering how much longer before the house burned down around her. She was aware enough to tell me – to show me with her eyes that I needed to turn off the burner. I had plenty of time to say I love you, but I forgot. I forgot! ”
“Will–”
“She was the only person in this whole family who made it okay for me to not be some – some caricature of manhood, like Jimmy or Mike. She was the only one who didn’t look at me like I was a huge disappointment to her. She never gave me shit, just because I wanted to write poems instead of play sports or fix up old cars or, I don’t know, beat people up and play beer pong. Do you know what my own father told me when he read one of my poems? ‘That’s good, Will, but don’t spend too much time on that shit – it’ll give you a limp wrist.’”
Granted, his father had said it in a superficially teasing way; but it was one of those teasing ways that suggested he half-believed it. And that was par for the course with the rest of his family.
“Well, now you’re old enough to know how ignorant that is,” Andy pointed out.
“Yeah, but you know what else? Nonna was the only person in this entire goddamn family who tried to get my parents to do the right thing and kick Jimmy out of the house. Oh, and that was after she tried to get them to take Jimmy to rehab, but they wouldn’t do that either. My own parents let him turn the in-law unit into a fucking meth house and terrorize me night and day because they were either too busy or too hammered to notice.”
“Will...” Andy was visibly grasping for words; William could tell. His face contorted with the effort, his lips forming syllables his voice never gave substance to. Finally, he huffed out a sigh. “You need to tell your parents all of this, every single bit of it. Tell them how it made you feel – how it still makes you feel.”
“What difference would it make? They know they screwed up, but there’s nothing they can do about it now. If I pick at that wound, they’ll just work and drink themselves even stupider. And now, Kelly doesn’t even have Nonna to compensate for their absence.”
“Or maybe it would be a wake-up call for your parents.”
William scoffed. “Fat chance.”
“At the very least, maybe it would give them an opportunity to offer you a long-overdue apology.”
“Even if they did, so what? Jimmy’s still in prison, Nonna’s still dead, and I’m still stuck with a family who’s convinced I got switched at birth.”
“No,” Andy insisted, slowly rising to his own feet. “Don’t you remember what we talked about? Your power is in your response, Will. Use yours to honor your grandmother. Use it to defy Jimmy and anyone else who tries to drag you down. Would your nonna want you to turn your back on all of your talents and opportunities, just because she’s gone?”
Suddenly wracked with sobs, William collapsed back into a chair – one he hadn’t yet upended. He thought he had gotten all of the crying out of his system a month ago, but apparently not. Andy pulled another chair up beside him and draped an arm around his shoulders, murmuring words of encouragement and comfort.
That’s when an unexpected image intruded into William's consciousness: Mike’s albatross drawing. The one William had commissioned from him.
Mike had produced it not long after Nonna died, his eyes serious for once, as if he had guessed what it meant to William. It was astonishing and beautiful, with its wings outstretched and its head turned in profile. Its beak open, as if scoffing at all the world’s snares and cages.
Sitting there at the dining table with Andy, the image was so clear before him. And that’s when he remembered
“That one’s far from home,” Uncle Frank had said. It was during their three-week albacore tuna fishing trip. They were just off the Farallones. He was standing on the deck, shielding his eyes from the sun as he looked up.
William followed his gaze. “What kind is that?” It wasn’t the first albatross William had ever seen, but it was the first one like this – white body, dark wings. The iconic albatross look. Not like the dark-all-over black-footed albatross more common to these waters.
“Laysan albatross,” Frank grunted. “Usually they nest in Hawaii, but when breeding season is over, you’ll occasionally see one around here. Still, it’s pretty rare.”
They resumed working, but every so often, when William paused for a drink of water or a bathroom break, he spotted it, still circling overhead. Still following them, as if waiting to snag a meal from their by-catch. But it never did. It just circled, watching over them. Late in the afternoon, when they were wrapping up operations, William glanced up to find it gone.
But William was still there, stumbling with clumsy feet over the deck of his uncle’s boat.
“Will.”
Andy’s voice snatched William back into the present moment. He had no sense of how much time had passed, but William had cried himself dry again. Andy was still there, but he seemed to be waging his own internal battle.
Finally, Andy lifted his gaze to William’s. “I’m going to say this once, and this is all I can say about it. But maybe you’ve heard the expression before: ‘Hurt people hurt people.’”
He peered intently at William, as if waiting for the words to sink in. It was clearly important to him, so William rallied his last shred of mental energy to try and understand.
Hurt people hurt people.
But was Andy talking about Jimmy? Or his parents?
“It’s not an excuse,” Andy added quietly, wearing an oddly defeated look that William didn’t understand. “Just context.”
A long time ago, Nonna had told him about a bird that her own mother kept as a pet – some kind of dove or pigeon she found on the sidewalk with a lame wing. When Nonna asked her mother why she kept him in a cage instead of releasing him back into the wild, her mother answered, “For his own safety. If I set him free, something will catch and eat him. He was bred for food, or maybe to be released during weddings. But he doesn’t know how to survive out there, which is how he wound up with a crippled wing.”
Hurt people hurt people.
That evening, after Andy went home, William shut himself in his bedroom again. Reaching into the drawer of his bedside table, he retrieved his address book, thumbing through it until he landed on the T section.
Temkina, Serafima.
He dialed her number, and the ringback tone sounded in his ear.
Click .
“Hello?”
“Haze? It’s–”
“William.”
Surprised, he said, “How did you know?”
“Caller ID.”
“Oh. Right.”
A beat. “Are you okay?”
William gave a rueful huff, but said nothing.
“I’m sorry,” she rushed out, breathless. “Of course you’re not okay. Mike told me what happened. I’m so sorry.”
“I’m fine.”
From her silence on the other end of the line, he assumed she could tell that was a lie. After several beats, she ventured, “Will... did I ever tell you I found my mother dead when I was eleven?”
“No.” It came out flat, so he quickly added, “I’m sorry.”
“I’m not telling you so you'll console me. I’m telling you because even though my experience may not be exactly the same, I do know a little something about it. And I know from experience where it can take you when you try to forget at all costs.”
After a moment to allow her words to sink in, William said dully, “Thanks.” But the truth was, he wasn’t calling to talk about forgetting, or not forgetting.
He was calling to talk about safety.
Clearing his throat, he plowed ahead. “Haze... how old do I have to be to get a tattoo?”
“A tattoo?” she echoed skeptically. “Eighteen, of course. With brothers like yours, I would have thought you’d know.”
“I do, but... how old do I have to be to get a tattoo from you? ”
A few beats ensued, in which William heard nothing but his pulse swishing through his ears.
Finally, she asked, “What kind of tattoo are we talking about?”
“An albatross. I already have the design, but don’t tell Mike. He drew it, and he’s trying to establish himself as a tattoo artist; but I don’t want him coming anywhere near my back with a needle. ”
She gave a knowing chuckle. “So is that where you want it, then? On your back?”
William hummed in confirmation. “And Haze? There’s just one more detail I’d like you to add, if possible.”
“What’s that?”
He sucked in a deep breath, welding the final bar in place.
Numb.
“Can you put my albatross in a cage?”