The Sky Beneath My Feet - By Lisa Samson Page 0,38
Skype. “They don’t need bodies at all,” Rick says. “They just need broadband.” One of his hobbyhorses, though it didn’t keep him from tinkering with the wireless network until he could get a strong signal out in the shed.
As I park and get out of the van, someone emerges from the strange car.
“Gregory,” I say.
My older brother stops at the curb, giving me a scarecrow shrug. “Did I get mixed up? Where’s the birthday boy?”
“Come here.” I put the Foot Locker bag on the ground and give him a hug. As always, he squeezes tight and lifts me off my toes.
“Hey, sis. How you keeping?”
“Don’t tell me you drove down for Eli’s party. We weren’t even planning to be in town.”
“Let me look at you,” he says, holding me at arm’s length. He wears an old corduroy blazer he’s had for years, a lumpy sweater, baggy pants, orthopedic-looking leather shoes, all of it far too big and an inch or two too short for his frame. In school they nicknamed him Lurch. He started using the name himself, though I never did.
“Where are you staying?”
“Over at Dad’s.” He jerks a thumb over his shoulder, as if our father’s house were across the street and not out in the sticks. “I’ve been down here a couple of days.”
“Is everything all right? If he had another doctor’s appointment and didn’t call me—”
“Eliza, chill. Nothing’s wrong with Dad.”
“And the two of you are getting along now?”
He seesaws his hand. “To be honest, I don’t think he’s got a firm grip on recent history. Have you noticed he’s kind of in a muddle? He seems fine if he’s talking about boats, the sea, that kind of thing, or grousing about politics. When you get him on the subject of people, though . . .”
“I know,” I say. “He’s getting old, that’s all.”
“That’s not all. But anyway, I didn’t drop by to talk about Dad. I have a favor to ask.”
“So Eli’s birthday has nothing to do with it.”
He smiles. “I brought him a card.”
“His birthday’s not until tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? Perfect.”
I bring him inside, depositing him in the kitchen while I take the Foot Locker bag upstairs. Then I brew coffee while he peruses the bookshelf in the living room, sighing at what he finds, thinking I can’t hear him. One of the first things I did was rearrange the books, minimizing the gaps Rick left behind.
Jed comes down the stairs, curious about the voices.
“Your Uncle Greg dropped by. Go entertain him.”
Ordinarily he would retreat back to his room, but at the mention of Greg’s name, he lights up. The two of them start talking computers, picking up where they left off—what was it?—two years ago at Christmas.
We both managed to disappoint our father, Gregory through alcoholism and a lackluster academic career, me by eloping with a “fundamentalist nut job” (Dad’s words), settling for the barefoot-and-pregnant life when I was intended for better things. In my dad’s eyes, you could deny the Virgin Birth and the Incarnation, pretty much anything in the Bible, and you’d still be a fundamentalist nut job just for going to church. He was down on Quakers too, though—an equal opportunity skeptic. What really set him off, of course, was the hypocrisy of it all: the fundamentalist nut job knocking up his daughter.
“What, he doesn’t believe in rubbers?”
My dad has a way with words.
Rick’s family, for the record, was much more supportive. They sensed I wasn’t quite one of them and were just relieved I was going to have the baby. Like they assumed you had to be one of them not to solve the problem by having an abortion.
My elopement and Greg’s drinking both came out around the same time, within a year of our parents finally splitting. Mom went back to Pennsylvania, remarried, and owns a real estate agency in Altoona. Dad bought a crappy little shack overlooking Tar Cove and became a weekend sailor until his heart problems were diagnosed. I visit him out of a sense of duty, doing what I can to make him comfortable. He whiles away his retirement drinking black coffee in greasy-spoon diners, wearing a stethoscope around his neck.
The first time I saw it dangling there, I was perplexed. “What’s that for?”
“So I can hear I’m still breathing,” he snapped, clamping the chest piece against his skin to demonstrate. “See? Still going strong.”
Maybe this was his way of reassuring me. It didn’t work.
Despite our issues, I don’t want to lose my father any more