Cynthia, for all her frustrations with Ernest’s career path, appreciated his passion and authenticity. And his lack of traditional ambition allowed her more freedom to pursue her career while he took on cooking for the family and other time-consuming household duties. That flexibility in a man of their generation was hard to find.
And somewhere in all his idealism, he did possess a realist’s eye. Cynthia filled with relief whenever he acknowledged practicalities, limits, and contradictions, the daily bread of her practice. When she couldn’t manage to block the building of a mall on some prairie grasses, Ernest nodded in understanding at the other lawyer’s argument that the financial benefits for the depressed town would outweigh the natural harm. “See,” Cynthia had pointed out to him, “you would’ve made a strong lawyer. It’s all about seeing the other side so you can plan the appropriate counterarguments, and an appropriate counterargument can lead to finding a working compromise.” That was the backbone of her work: negotiation. But then he said that he was just pretending; in actuality, he couldn’t see the other side. He could understand it but he could never empathize. And somehow, in all of his contradictions and obvious posturing, she loved him anyway. For all his complaining, Ernest was in touch with the essential playfulness of life. She still brightened every time he burst into a room with some little fact or wry observation that he just had to share with her.
Ernest’s car was a disheveled old beast that hadn’t been serviced in years, a maroon Volkswagen Jetta with scrapes of rust rimming the wheel wells. Cynthia teased him sometimes to trade it in, but secretly, she felt a swell of affection for it whenever she heard its motor rasp to a stop in the driveway. In the backseat, torn upholstery and files from his work. Between the front seats, a few banged-up cassette tapes stored in a heavy pottery dish Gabe had made in grade school, along with change and keys to a long-abandoned locker at the YMCA. The tape player wasn’t there anymore, just the wiry guts of a deck long ago ripped out by a thief unconcerned with the fastidiousness of his crime.
For months Ernest had driven around in silence, but Gabe had deemed this too depressing, so he outfitted his father’s car with his old boom box; it sat on the passenger seat, some kind of stereophonic pet living off D batteries. When the power ran out, Gabe replaced the batteries for him, fetching the frozen alkaline tubes out of the garage refrigerator that Ernest stocked with frozen marinades, soups, Popsicles for the summer, rolls of film, exotic spicy mustards and hot sauces. Some of the foods were stored with a recipe attached or just the aura of a plan. His children thought it was strange that he had plans so far ahead for something as ordinary as dinner, but to him the days clicked by that way, filled with reassuring little details.
He puttered home from work, spent but still nervous from an exhausting afternoon. In what was supposed to be a quickie freelance gig for the state government—he’d taken it on in addition to his Earth Day duties for the extra cash—he met with developers who had condo plans for a prairie area some sixty miles south of the city. His job was to inform them that their project wouldn’t work because some bird nests would be in jeopardy. The CEO of the company asked Ernest a series of questions that grew more hostile as they went along.
Ernest didn’t mind educating the developer on the new measure; it had been passed only for a year. The brawny businessman was spoiled by a culture where he could build anything, anywhere, and not worry about the problems. Toxic runoffs into water, fine dust from construction materials covering the ground for miles around, destruction of tree groves and bird nests, buying people’s land with eminent domain, changing pathways of roads to go around his projects—he never had to be concerned about any of it until recently, so, at first, Ernest was patient with the man’s confusion. But then it became clear that the developer wasn’t seeking clarification on the measure; he simply opposed its very existence.
Once Ernest recognized the true mission of the developer’s questions, his mood shifted. “There aren’t any ways around this measure,” Ernest repeated. “And it isn’t in effect to make your life difficult.”
“How about I make your life difficult?” the developer said with a sleazy smile.
Ernest could sense the developer sizing up his shaggy hair and his unassuming sneakers, and he silently returned the same scorn for the developer’s ostentatious pinkie ring and starched shirt.
“No one’s life has to be difficult,” Ernest said. “Birds included.”
After the meeting was over, as Ernest drifted home, he reflected more on his self-presentation. Cynthia would’ve recommended playing a different part, rather than the granola-chomping nature advocate. “It only muddles the true issues,” she would have said, “because then they fixate on you and how you must feel superior to them. Or, worse, how you are an incompetent pot-smoking hippie who can’t be taken seriously.” That’s why, for all professional interactions, Cynthia dressed in simple, moderately priced skirts and blouses. She preferred neutrality, but Ernest couldn’t situate himself outside his identity, no matter how much he conceded that it might help him.
Through the windshield he spotted a set of white lines on the sky, a little wavy like they were drawn in shaving cream: contrails. He pulled over at Aurora Park and got out of his car to take in the sight of this man-made intrusion on the natural world, somewhat repulsive, somewhat fascinating. He was also in no hurry to go home.
Twilight pink was settling on the fall day, the kind of breezy beauty that the Midwest delivered around this time of year as an early apology for the next five months of meteorological brutality. On the park’s corner near the basketball court, a woman stood alone, staring into the sky. Ernest stood at a polite distance from her, watching one of the cottony lines shred till it vanished. The other lines remained.
He released a long sigh. She turned her chin over one shoulder to look at him.
“Did you know that Chinese astronomers in the fourth century thought that the blue of the sky was an illusion?”
“Is that so?” she said.
“They thought it was an optical illusion to cover up the infinite, empty space.”
“I guess we know it a little differently now,” she said. Then pointing at the contrails: “See those marks in the sky? They come from all the chemicals we’re using.”
He knew the contrails theory only a little bit. The sharp lines that jets and planes drew in the sky were really remnants of their pollutants, leaked out of their tails as they soared to oases unknown.
“I’ve been researching it,” she said, still not turning around fully, but he caught enough of her face to recognize her.
“Marilyn Fournier,” he said. “You write for the city paper. I remember your piece a few years ago on the city’s Earth Day debacle. That was a great story.”
She turned around to thank him, but he was already continuing.
“I’m always reading environment stories for my work. You know,” he said, taking a step forward as the opportunity dawned on him, “I’m organizing Earth Day’s twenty-fifth anniversary next year. It’ll be held right here in this park. It’s going to be quite the blowout.” As he spoke about the town politics of getting the event off the ground, and how he had convinced Prairie Park to increase the budget, he thought he noticed Marilyn checking him out. He had ventured out on an arduous hike yesterday; maybe the healthy afterglow hadn’t yet faded.
“And you also consult?” she asked. She listened to his explanation about monitoring certain construction projects with a slight smile. “So you’re an enviro-cop.”
“To serve and protect.”
“I