room, this married couple separated on the road and needs space apart.
Someone shouts from upstairs, They’ve enameled the toilets in gold! In the hilarity that rises and echoes in the house, something in Handy’s face relaxes.
That’s funny, he murmurs. I get it. Diamonds and carbuncles, silver baubles for the kidlets. I read that book, too. Which was it?
More’s Utopia, Abe says, a little sullen.
Yeah, Handy says, and he considers Abe. Then, miracles, Handy breaks into that famous smile of his, that dimpled Buddha beam; it turns plain old Handy into something charming. He puts his hand on Abe’s shoulder, and they lean toward one another for a moment. Handy says, Well, all right, then. All right. It’s a good thing. You’ve done good to keep us together, this is a good thing. A great gift. I thank you, Abraham Stone, with my full heart.
Under the older man’s words, Abe flushes with pleasure and ducks his head like a child.
That afternoon, before the kegs of Oly beer and jugs of red wine, before the Slap-Apple and pies, before Handy and the Free People start to play their music out on the grass during the wild reunion party that will stretch, thanks to the generator, deep through the night and into the quiet parts of the morning, before the kids heap together to sleep like baby chicks in a nest, before all this uproar, they bring up from Ersatz Arcadia everything that they need for the night, the mattresses and sheets and toothbrushes and soap. Everything else will be carried up the next day.
Then someone sets off a Roman candle, and in the after-stink of sulfur, the party begins.
Deep past midnight, Handy stands on a table. How small Handy is, but how he seems to fill all of Arcadia. People are sleeping in the grass. Bit is on a blanket with the other children, their faces smeared with jam and juice, the night turning cold on their limbs. Handy begins to sing, his voice whetted to a knife edge by the Tour. It cuts Bit to wakening when he hears Ole, oleanna, ole, oleanna ole, ole, ole, ole, ole, oleanna. The Norwegian lyrics stretch toward something fleeting, the perfection Handy talks about all the time, dreams about, weaves his seductive words around until it rises, whole and beautiful, before the rest of them. He sings as if today, the day of homecoming, he can reach out to touch what he sees, as if mixed in the victory there is still nostalgia, but for the good present that will soon be the past. Bit looks beyond Handy, to a blanket on the ground where Hannah and Abe are clenched so tight together that it is hard to tell his skin from hers. Yet Bit sees it clearly when he looks at them: even in the darkness, the empty space that keeps the one from the other, the thing the size of a fist, a heart, a loaf, a rose; the size of his sister he’ll never see. Something rips in Bit, and he begins to cry. He cries his overfull heart out, pours it into the dazzled sky. He does so silently. Not yet, noise. It’s still not time.
It is the day after Handy returned, the day before May planting, and the sun is hot and good. The grass is bristling with green. The women move the last of the stuff up from Ersatz Arcadia, and the children nap in the Dormitory. It feels too strange to sleep without his parents’ smell in the sheets, and Bit watches in the window where a lazy fly buzzes on the glass.
Like ants that bear bits of leaf and bread, the women go up the hill with their armfuls of goods. Bit’s breath stops: under the green and welcome arms of the oak, he sees Hannah.
His mother pauses in the courtyard and puts down her pillows. She unfurls her fists. She lifts her arms up and closes her eyes and cants her chin toward the sky.
Hannah, hands full of sun.
A soft dawn, under the copper beech that Felipe loved. Maria sings, her voice broken: Gracias a la vida. Ricky’s hands are clumsy on the guitar. Under the leaves, the skin of Maria’s burnt arms shines, slightly wrinkled, like the bark of the tree above
Someone shouts from upstairs, They’ve enameled the toilets in gold! In the hilarity that rises and echoes in the house, something in Handy’s face relaxes.
That’s funny, he murmurs. I get it. Diamonds and carbuncles, silver baubles for the kidlets. I read that book, too. Which was it?
More’s Utopia, Abe says, a little sullen.
Yeah, Handy says, and he considers Abe. Then, miracles, Handy breaks into that famous smile of his, that dimpled Buddha beam; it turns plain old Handy into something charming. He puts his hand on Abe’s shoulder, and they lean toward one another for a moment. Handy says, Well, all right, then. All right. It’s a good thing. You’ve done good to keep us together, this is a good thing. A great gift. I thank you, Abraham Stone, with my full heart.
Under the older man’s words, Abe flushes with pleasure and ducks his head like a child.
That afternoon, before the kegs of Oly beer and jugs of red wine, before the Slap-Apple and pies, before Handy and the Free People start to play their music out on the grass during the wild reunion party that will stretch, thanks to the generator, deep through the night and into the quiet parts of the morning, before the kids heap together to sleep like baby chicks in a nest, before all this uproar, they bring up from Ersatz Arcadia everything that they need for the night, the mattresses and sheets and toothbrushes and soap. Everything else will be carried up the next day.
Then someone sets off a Roman candle, and in the after-stink of sulfur, the party begins.
Deep past midnight, Handy stands on a table. How small Handy is, but how he seems to fill all of Arcadia. People are sleeping in the grass. Bit is on a blanket with the other children, their faces smeared with jam and juice, the night turning cold on their limbs. Handy begins to sing, his voice whetted to a knife edge by the Tour. It cuts Bit to wakening when he hears Ole, oleanna, ole, oleanna ole, ole, ole, ole, ole, oleanna. The Norwegian lyrics stretch toward something fleeting, the perfection Handy talks about all the time, dreams about, weaves his seductive words around until it rises, whole and beautiful, before the rest of them. He sings as if today, the day of homecoming, he can reach out to touch what he sees, as if mixed in the victory there is still nostalgia, but for the good present that will soon be the past. Bit looks beyond Handy, to a blanket on the ground where Hannah and Abe are clenched so tight together that it is hard to tell his skin from hers. Yet Bit sees it clearly when he looks at them: even in the darkness, the empty space that keeps the one from the other, the thing the size of a fist, a heart, a loaf, a rose; the size of his sister he’ll never see. Something rips in Bit, and he begins to cry. He cries his overfull heart out, pours it into the dazzled sky. He does so silently. Not yet, noise. It’s still not time.
It is the day after Handy returned, the day before May planting, and the sun is hot and good. The grass is bristling with green. The women move the last of the stuff up from Ersatz Arcadia, and the children nap in the Dormitory. It feels too strange to sleep without his parents’ smell in the sheets, and Bit watches in the window where a lazy fly buzzes on the glass.
Like ants that bear bits of leaf and bread, the women go up the hill with their armfuls of goods. Bit’s breath stops: under the green and welcome arms of the oak, he sees Hannah.
His mother pauses in the courtyard and puts down her pillows. She unfurls her fists. She lifts her arms up and closes her eyes and cants her chin toward the sky.
Hannah, hands full of sun.
A soft dawn, under the copper beech that Felipe loved. Maria sings, her voice broken: Gracias a la vida. Ricky’s hands are clumsy on the guitar. Under the leaves, the skin of Maria’s burnt arms shines, slightly wrinkled, like the bark of the tree above
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