“Maybe if he’d gotten in a punch they’d have hauled him in too. Instead, they scraped him up and threw some ice on his face. Boyle didn’t notice it until he locked up, but he came straight to the jail to tell me the monkey’d taken a crowbar to my car—had the crowbar and everything. Found it hooked into the passenger-side window.”
“Well, that’s cowardly,” said Faith. “Downright cowardly.” She felt the unfairness of it. She felt sorry for the defenseless Buick, its cracked windshield, a gaping hole where the grille once was. As if to express his outrage, Little Richard began leaping about the aquarium, his wiry fingers hooking into the mesh on the ceiling.
“He wants out,” said Ed. “I don’t blame him. It’s no good to be locked up. People pointing fingers, staring.” Ed watched his reflection in the aquarium glass. “It’s no good,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “I should let him out.”
“Let him out! What if he gets into something? He could get hurt.”
“I don’t mean let him out here,” he said. “I mean let him go.”
“You mean set him free?” Faith stared at Little Richard as he dangled from the mesh, watched his small chest bounce with each quick breath, tried to read his thoughts. “Yes,” she finally said, “I think it’s what he wants.”
“It’s what we all want.”
“Where would you take him?”
“I dunno. How ’bout a swamp? Somewhere there’s plenty of bugs.”
Faith wrung her hands; she hadn’t expected this. Just like Marvin, Ed had preempted her, stolen the moment she had selected to make her point by embroiling her in another quandary, though she soon realized that this one did not feel fraught or even overly complicated.
“So now he can change his life,” she said. “Just like that.”
“Yes,” Ed said, the words hovering over them like a benediction. “Just like that.”
Ed took a deep breath as if readying himself for a long stint underwater, then rose and without a word approached the aquarium, opened the lid and scooped Little Richard into his palm. “Okay, buddy,” he said, turning to Faith. “Let’s go.” She wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or to Little Richard, but then Ed took her hand and the three exited Ed’s house to the amusement and great satisfaction of the neighbors.
They marched down the front steps and climbed into the passenger side of the Buick after the door opened with an excruciating whine. Faith would have offered to drive, but she’d grown so flustered when Ed took her hand that she’d simply followed. Slowly and silently they made their way toward the outskirts of town. The driver’s side mirror flew off like a projectile when Ed made a right-hand turn at Brimley, and as they bumped along the gravel road that led to the Racine Nature Preserve, the license plate skittered off into the gutter.
“It’s no good being locked up,” Ed said to Little Richard as they sat on the damp earth near the edge of a small pond. “Eating whatever they give you, being stared at or ignored. Being called a freak.”
“No one called you a freak,” said Faith, and Ed turned to her.
“I meant him.” He nodded at Little Richard. “Carmen said he was a freak of nature. Some sort of genetic mix-up. When I told her that Little Richard’s heart was bigger than hers, she broke all our dishes.”
As she watched Little Richard, his eyes fixed on Ed, his left front foot tapping Ed’s wristwatch, Faith was convinced he understood, and she was suddenly happy he would be forever freed from his fishbowl, his glass house, his observation tank. She thought of her neighbors then, how she’d allowed their stares to penetrate her skin, how she had put herself on display, made herself vulnerable by obsessing over what others thought.
Faith placed her hand on Ed’s, and Little Richard stepped onto it slowly and carefully, his head jerking to the sunset tunes of crickets and bullfrogs, dragonflies and peepers. “Are you happy?” she asked Little Richard. Just then he flicked his tail and opened his mouth wide, revealing a small red tongue, little serrated teeth, a razor-sharp smile.
The sun hung low in the sky, casting small shadows across the water and the stunted trees that fringed the pond.
“Well,” said Ed as he leaned toward Little Richard and stroked his chin, “I guess this is arrivederci. Happy trails, big fella.” He sniffed, rubbed his nose with a balled fist.
“We don’t have to do this,” said Faith.
“Yes,” said Ed. “It’s the only thing to do.”
Little Richard jolted upright in Faith’s palm, and she imagined she felt his heart beat as she spoke to him silently of fresh grass, of murky water, of freedom in all its pain and possibility. This is your chance, she thought. Here is a fresh start. For a while Little Richard stayed, rigid and immobile, his feet hooked in, rooted to his past like a myth. But when the moon took the sky and the sun bowed in homage to a new day, he sprung skyward, over the embankment and toward the water, falling forward into a new life.
turn of the wind
Ben was sixty-four, stubborn. Unprepared. He’d been tired, disoriented, and irritable for months, although the latter symptom was nothing unusual. When he finally visited Dr. Ludrow, the man promptly ignored his request to go easy on the tests, ordering a spinal tap to see if it was meningitis, an MRI to check for tumors or strokes, and psychological and cognitive tests to uncover depression. “And if it’s none of those,” he said without batting an eye, “then it’s probably dementia.” Three weeks later Ben sat opposite Dr. Ludrow in his oak-planked office holding a form that summarized the test results, one that diagnosed a high probability of Alzheimer’s. Ben made a copy and gave it to the research supervisor at the lab where he had explored the complex nature of solid matter for the past forty years.
“I’m not giving two weeks’ notice,” he said. “I hope you understand.”
“But, Ben,” she said, “your project is just taking off. We can accommodate your treatments, your schedule, whatever.”
“I don’t think I can—”
“Of course you can,” she said. “Take a few days off. Relax. We’ll talk about this next week.”
Phone against her ear, she marched from the lab as if it had all been settled. Ben wondered if she believed that relaxation was a remedy, that a few days off would cure Alzheimer’s, but he knew better. His work drew funding like a magnet, and while he’d always known that this is all that mattered, his supervisor’s blatant admission infuriated him. He stalked to the storage room, yanking a cardboard box from a high metal shelf before emptying file cabinets and loading crystal specimens inside. His arm, as if by its own volition, swept across his desk and sent pens and framed photographs flying. The lab techs looked up from folders and computer screens at the sound of shattering glass, but none dared approach.
As he drove home, the large box propped on the passenger seat beside him, Ben understood that no one had his experience or expertise and that they would struggle to continue his projects. The techs had watched him countless times as he tested unconventional crystal hosts in large glass cases, but it was the times they couldn’t watch—when he rushed to the lab at night or during weekends—that made him certain they could not continue his work. But he didn’t care. Why should a young upstart take credit for his innovations while he sat, glassy-eyed and drooling, unable to comprehend his former genius?
BEN HAD BEGUN HIS GROUND-BREAKING research two years earlier by testing environments that favor crystal growth—first water, then sediment, and finally gel mixtures—and found that the crystals prospered in outlandish materials. He grew calcite crystals in peaches, lead iodide in grape jelly. He found that growing crystals in gel is disarmingly simple, inexpensive, and