Nearer Than the Sky Read Online Free PDF Page A

but when I closed my eyes, I only saw Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. My mother didn’t fit into this picture, except maybe as Nurse Ratchet, in a starched white uniform, her graying blond hair coming loose from the tight braid she usually wore.
    “Last night she started talking to Benny.”
    I felt as though my heart had become detached from all of my veins and muscles and was floating upward, pulsating in my chest, my throat, my head.
    “What do you mean?” I asked, knowing exactly what she meant.
    “They called to ask me who Benny was. They told me she was talking to him. Like he was in the room with her,” Lily said. I could hear the pain of this catch in her throat.
    “How long is she going to be there?”
    “I don’t know. They want to send her back up north once she’s stabilized physically. They want to get her set up with a psychiatrist in Mountainview, to get her on medication, into counseling. But she can’t go up there alone. Somebody has to go with her.”
    “What am I supposed to do?” I asked.
    “ I can’t go with her. I need to be here with Violet.” She sighed heavily, the weight of a thousand worlds on her shoulders. “I can’t do this by myself. I need your help.”
    Anger welled up, and my dislodged heart found its way to my hands, which throbbed as I squeezed the phone. “Lily, it’s not as easy as that. I’m all the way in Maine, for Chrissakes—”
    “—and our mother is talking to our dead brother. Not to mention that she’s been drinking rat poison with her tea and swallowing eyedroppers of Draino for Chrissakes,” Lily hissed.
    “Fine,” I said. “I’ll bring her home, but I’m not staying.”
    “Soon?”
    “It’s just because of Benny,” I said.“I want to hear what she has to say about Benny.”

    At home, Peter made tea for me and grabbed a beer for himself. We put on mittens and sweaters and sat outside watching the sun melt through the leaves that still clung to the trees. The end of autumn is precarious. A simple storm could rip the colors from the trees, leaving the dull branches exposed.
    We’d made a harvest dummy and carved jack-o-lanterns that shared the porch with us. We didn’t get trick-or-treaters, but Peter had insisted on a punch bowl filled with candy.
    I sat on the step below Peter, holding my mug with both hands, and he wrapped his legs against my sides to keep me warm. The loons that live at the pond up the road had left already. All summer they had called out to each other desperately in prehistoric voices. It was quiet without them.
    “What are you thinking?”
    I shrugged. There’s no way to explain some things to Peter. No way to articulate the twisting feeling my nerves get every time I am suddenly and involuntarily connected again with my past. My childhood is like an amputee’s phantom limb. It’s not something someone intact can understand.
    “Will you come with me?” I asked and immediately wished I hadn’t. I felt his legs stiffen against my sides.
    “Ind,” he said. “I would, but the restaurant . . .”
    “Forget it,” I said. “It’s fine. I know.”
    “If you need me to, I suppose I could have Joe watch the place for a few days.”
    “I said it’s fine.” I turned to look at him.
    He lowered his head and kissed my hair. “I’m sorry.”
    I nodded and suddenly felt guilty. Peter was afraid of flying. It was almost cruel to request this of him. Besides, I didn’t really want him to come, didn’t even know why I’d asked.
    After Peter went to bed, I crawled up the ladder that pulls down from the ceiling in our bedroom and sat at my desk. I picked up the fountain pen that he gave me for my birthday and opened the sketch pad I’d been using to write things down in. The light from the shed shone through the window onto the open pages.
    O CTOBER 31, 1999. L OCAL W OMAN A TTEMPTS S UICIDE BY P OISON , S URVIVES . Phoenix, Arizona. Judy Brown is in the hospital tonight after an apparent suicide