The draft of a story - 5/10/08
When Jeff was six he smacked two scoops of ice cream off a cone in Jodi's hand. He laughed. She cried. He apologized. She cried more. He gave her his ice cream and she smiled at him.
"I think airports are probably the opposite of graveyards, constantly busy and stressful," Jodi said. She had grown quite a bit since the ice cream incident.
"And full of planes" said Jeff. "Graveyards don't have planes."
"You raise a good point," Jodi said and picked up a flower.
"I think you are supposed to leave those," Jeff said to her. "That was probably left for someone who died of cancer or something."
"It's a waste of a perfectly good flower, if you ask me." Jodi said, "I don't want any flowers when I die. It seems so selfish."
"Of the dead person?"
"The dead can be selfish." Jodi reached down and left the flower on a different, smaller grave. "There. Now somebody else gets it. Are you happy?"
"I'm happier."
Jodi kicked up a clump of dirt with the toe of her combat boot. Jeff stared at a faded gravestone. Outside the cemetery, Chicago was slowly cooling after another August afternoon.
"So now you're going to become a famous musician, right?" Jodi asked.
"I'm off to meet my destiny," he said.
"Living in your parents basement?"
"That's where my destiny is kept."
Jeff watched Jodi swing her arms. When they were eight, he and Jodi ate a salad Jodi made from plants found in her yard and they were rushed to the emergency room.
"Why do you suppose so many people get buried under obelisks?" Jodi asked. "Do you think they are compensating for something."
"Probably for small genitals, yes."
"Hard to draw another conclusion."
"It is."
"I won't get an obelisk when I die, if I have anything to do with it," Jodi said.
"Just a stone?" Jeff asked her.
"Probably one of those little white crosses."
"Bully for you." Jeff looked away from her.
"What? I'm off to defend freedom, I can say whatever I want."
When they were seventeen Jodi got into West Point. Her dad was ex-army. Jeff had asked her if, now that she was an officer-to-be, he could see her guns. "Are we talking arms or breasts?" Jodi asked. "I can already see your arms," Jeff had said.
Jeff's own family had no military connections. His father had been a not-so-ardent protestor of the Vietnam war; one of many hippies superficially opposed to the war, but happy so long as he wasn't drafted. When Jeff thought of veterans, he saw men with bikes and tattoos or bearded amputees sleeping under the highway downtown.
Jeff stared at Jodi's arms. Four years of ROTC work gave her real triceps.
Jodi watched him and then said "Does it bother you that I could probably kick your ass?"
"I'm a modern man. I read graphic novels and blogs. Strength is no longer measure of me. Does it bother you that I am planning to undermine your efforts abroad by spreading anti-war propaganda at home?"
The sun was low and the graves spread shadows across the grass and over one another.
"No," Jodi said "I've always known you were planning to let the terrorists win."
"Because I'm part of the leftist hippy cabal that wants to destroy American values?"
"That's pretty much it," She grinned.
Jeff remembered when he turned sixteen Jodi got a homeless man to buy him a lottery ticket for his birthday. It was a scratch off and he won another lottery ticket, which they couldn't redeem without finding another homeless man. She told Jeff to keep the ticket in his wallet. "It'll be like you are keeping a photo of me, but without a photo of me," she had said. She hated how she looked in photos.
The cemetery was silent but for the small distant rumblings of car engines accelerating from a stoplight an unseen distance away. With the lowering light and the seemingly random distributions of headstones, the graveyard looked like some spired city had been buried many years ago and only the tops of its towers were now left aboveground.
"I am going to say it again: I don't want you to go," Jeff said.
Jodi walked over and sat down on a rectangular headstone. She stopped smiling.
"I don't want you to get the chicken pox, but you didn't as a kid, so you've got to sometime."
"I don't think the analogy works."
Jodi picked up a stick and was burrowing it into the ground.
"How deep do you think they bury these guys?" she asked. "you think they go the whole six feet?"
"I think they're pretty much required to."
Jodi twisted the stick into the dirt. Halogen lamps lit up in the street outside the cemetery. Jeff lowered himself onto the grass. Three hours until Jodi left O'hare; ten minutes until she left for O'hare. It was like a pit in his stomach. It wasn't that he disapproved of what she was doing, though he did. Nor was it that he feared for her, though he did. It was a simple desire that she continue to be here.
"I don't want you to go," Jeff said again.
Jodi broke off her stick in the ground.
"Wait? What?! Why didn't you tell me?" She picked up a brown leaf and crumpled it and then breathed deeply, "Really, honestly, you have to stop saying that. Let's just talk about nothing."
He stared at her. She stood. She was losing color with the light and was now half-shadow. She began to walk to the car.
When they were six, Jodi ran up to him and pulled her T-shirt down to bear one of her shoulders imitating someone she had seen on television. 'Je-eff' she had said in a tone as sultry as a six-year-old could have. When they were seven he sat next to her on the bus for day camp and they yelled at the teenage counselor if he tried to sleep.
She stopped in front of a large stone spherical tombstone that read 'Cumming Cherry' across the front. He came up behind and put his hands on her shoulders.
"Do you suppose some people's purpose in life is just as an object of ridicule?" He asked.
Jodi stared at the gravestone "There's is a hymen joke in there somewhere," she said.
Jeff rubbed her shoulders. In tenth grade, Jeff took a stand against e-mail. He said there was nothing worth saying that you couldn't say better with an old-fashioned letter. Jodi sent him a letter that said "are you still awake?"
They stood in silence a moment, then began to walk again.
"Do you think Iraqis build sand castles or sand mosques?" Jodi asked.
"Probably they build weapons of mass destruction."
"Out of sand?"
"That's what I hear."
Jeff saw the outlines of their separate cars.
"They say it reaches 120 degrees over there," Jodi said.
"They do say that."
"You think I'll get a tan?"
"I don't think you'll be wearing a bikini."
"I'm bringing my bullet-proof one."
"Oh."
"Do you think that meeting in a graveyard to say good bye is maudlin?" Jodi asked.
"It was your idea."
"I know. I think goodbyes should be Maudlin. What do you think?"
"I haven't really had many to deal with."
They were at the cars. The dusk smelled like trees and if it weren't for the unceasing rush of car tires and the periodic whirr of distant acceleration it would have seemed like they were alone in the wild.
"Last chance for you to tell me whatever awful secrets you're hiding from me." Jodi said.
"Last chance for you to go AWOL. I'll hide you in my basement if you want."
"Like a sleepover?"
"Yeah."
She hugged him, and he hugged her. Then she opened her car door and he stood there and she got in and she drove off and he kept standing.
When they were in seventh grade, he and Jodi thought they were attracted to each other because they spent time together. He spent an hour putting an arm around her shoulder then removing it again while they watched a movie. He thought about the conversation they had later, filled with silences, when they broke off any potential romance and then the three weeks of uncomfortable encounters that followed that conversation.
Jodi's blinker flashed yellow as she turned from the cemetery onto Ravenswood avenue. Jeff stood there not sure if he was waiting, and, if he was waiting, not sure what he might be waiting for.
A Memory - 7/18/07
Gosh, when I think back on it, it's almost hard to remember a time when I couldn't fly. I didn't grow wings at first though. At first it was one of those powers that nobody knows you have unless you demonstrate right there for everyone to see, like being a good speller or maybe jumping double-dutch.
The first time though. I guess that was in fourth grade... or maybe it was earlier. I think maybe I just assume it was fourth grade because my school in fourth grade is the first place I can remember flying over. The school was called Head Royce and it had a swimming pool. Before that my family moved around a lot, mostly in Colorado. But in third grade we moved to California and fourth grade I moved to another new school and that's the first time I remember flying.
It was definitely during P.E. Or maybe right after, actually. We were swimming that day and I remember I had this terrible aversion to being naked in public - I was not nearly so glorious then - and I was terrified that the other boys in the locker room would make fun of me or try to smack at my thighs or groin before I could get my underwear or swimsuit back on again.
Anyway, I rushed out of the pool and changed quickly and escaped the locker room, but then Jacob Shepard came out and punched me hard in the arm and said "Nick sucks." Jacob swam all the time and had really big biceps. It really hurt when he hit me, so I just stood there for a while and let the other kids get back to class before me. Two years later, when I came to school in sweat pants Jacob gave me a fierce wedgie and I cried in front of the class. Today he works for Greenpeace, I think.
I don't think I was terribly graceful that first time. The grace came later along with the big angel wings. People assume those are instrumental, but, honestly, they are mostly for show and somewhat for balance. I remember just hovering there at first, a couple feet above the ground. I was a little surprised by my lift off.
But what could I do but go up. So I floated up past the top of he chain-link fence around the pool. The kids from the next PE class were swimming and yelling at each other. No one saw me because they were playing Marco Polo. Pretty soon I was up further. I was waving my arms and legs all over the place, you'd never believe how clumsy it was. I passed up over the wood railing on the upper school patio that looked over the pool. I remember the high schoolers were eating lunch, but I guess no one noticed me because if they had they would have said something and I think I would remember that.
It wasn't until years later that the papers caught on and I did all those publicity tours and wrote the book and all. Honestly, it was a very mundane event.
If I had been smarter about it, I might have flown over to my classroom window - Mrs. Laddish always kept the window open and I could have hovered just under the soffit and listened to what people said when I wasn't there. I still sometimes wonder if Jacob and the others talked about me.
Instead though, I just kept drifting up. I was like a hot-air balloon then rather than the jet fighter I am now. I floated over the whole school where I could see the brown roofs of all the buildings with a single bright blue spot for the swimming pool. Up the hill, some middle-schoolers were playing baseball; the school built the basketball courts several years later. I flew so high I could see the bay bridge arching onto and off of Yerba Buena Island and then the Golden gate, which was misty in the distance. Then I heard someone yelling my name - my hearing, even then, was on the verge of supernatural - and I let myself tumble back down past the tree line and past the high school patio and back until I hovered just a few feet off of the ground. My arm still hurt.
Mrs. Ladish was standing outside our classroom, across the big cement courtyard with the painted green benches that were terribly uncomfortable. I let my feet touch the ground and I ran over to our classroom because I didn't want to cause a fuss. I got there and Mrs. Laddish looked down at me and said "Nicholas, you need to come right back from PE after it's over, OK?"
I nodded. Inside the room and saw that Jacob and the other boys were watching the classroom rat in his terrarium. Some of the girls were coloring. I walked over to see if I could see the rat. I couldn't so I sat down and waited for someone in the class to pay attention to me. I remember I had to sit alone until Mrs. Laddish started teaching grammar.
"Just wait," I thought. "Just you wait."