You Can See More From Up Here by Mark Guerin

Author:Mark Guerin [Guerin, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mark Guerin
Published: 2019-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

THIRTY-FIVE

“SOMEONE THERE?”

A girlish voice called out from inside. I peeked in the screen door. Bunnies were everywhere: a stuffed bunny in mid-tumble on pine stairs, children’s crayoned drawings with big floppy ears pinned to a corkboard next to bills and phone numbers, pink ceramic bunnies in a wooden display case. They brightened up a decor darkened by cheap wood paneling. The screened windows and the floor, each pine plank of which shifted under my steps, reminded me this was a summer fishing cottage.

“Yes, it’s me,” Manny said as we shuffled inside. Along the hallway sprawled a crumbling fort of Tinker Toys and Lincoln Logs, guarded by green plastic soldiers and little Matchbox cars. Still clinging to me, Manny took care to step around the scene, so I did the same. “That way.” He pointed through a wide opening beyond which children chattered.

The two of us, attached at the hip, shuffled into the living room, the floor creaking at our every move. Sitting on an orange shag carpet with her back to us, a young woman held an infant to her shoulder. She rocked the baby, swaddled in a pink blanket, holding a bottle to its mouth. No, the woman wasn’t simply young. A teenager. The mother? I could just see the side of her face, next to her eye, a birthmark. She’d been at the hospital—the Candy Striper who’d been by Manny’s bedside. The beauty. But what was she doing here? Babysitting?

In front of her knelt the two plump, dark-haired little boys I’d seen on Manny’s hospital bed. They leaned over a board game between them on the carpet.

“Papá!” one boy shouted, jumping up and running over, followed by the other. They both wrapped themselves around the legs of their father—something I could never do with mine.

“Now, now,” he said, rubbing their heads. His face swirled from pain to pleasure and back again.

The girl shifted around, surprised at me, this strange young man in their house. She scrambled to her knees and, encumbered by the infant, awkwardly pushed herself up.

“Hello,” she said, taken aback.

“Hi,” I said. But then she caught sight of how I was holding Manny, and she took a step towards him, her surprise turned into concern.

“Papá, I told you it was too early to go back to work.” Her lips pressed together, she tilted her head down in a small reproach. Manny’s daughter?

He shrugged at her, his shoulders lifting and dropping.

“Pobrecito,” she murmured, coming over. She hoisted the baby higher on her shoulder, the ruddy-faced infant making tiny sucking sounds. The girl considered me again, this time with an embarrassed smile, testing and discarding speeches, until she said, “Can you get him over to the sofa?”

“Sure.”

Across the room stood a big couch. Its flowery slipcover had pulled away from one overstuffed arm, revealing tattered upholstery underneath, stuffing puffed out. We maneuvered around an unvarnished, cable-spool coffee table, on which the stenciled words “RICHARD’S ELECTRIC” were still visible in black. In the middle of the table sat a

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