Colum McCann - Let the Great World Spin

She should do something, she knows, to let them know they’re welcome. Hand Marcia a handkerchief. Get her a tall, cool glass of water. Take the flowers from Gloria’s hands. Open up the bakery boxes and spread them out. Compliment the bagels. Something, anything. But they are stuck on the swell of Marcia now, watching the rise and fall of her chest.

— Glass of water, Marcia?

— Yes, please. Oh, yes.

— A man where?

The voices fading. Silly of me. Into the kitchen, quickquick. She doesn’t want to miss a word. The soft murmur of conversation from the living room. To the freezer. The ice tray. Should have put in fresh trays this morning. Never thought of it. She bangs them on the marble counter. Three, four cubes. A few shards spread out across the counter. Old ice. Hazy at the center. One cube slips across the counter as if to release itself, falls on the floor. Should I? She glances toward the living room and picks the cube off the floor. In one smooth motion she’s across to the sink. Allows the tap to run a second, washes the cube, fills the glass. She should slice some lemon and would in normal circumstances, but instead she’s out of the kitchen and into the living room and across the carpet, with the water.

— Here you go.

— Oh, lovely. Thanks.

And a smile from Janet, of all people.

— But the ferry boat was full, you see, says Marcia.

She’s a little hurt that Marcia didn’t wait for her to begin, but no matter. The ferry from Staten Island, no doubt.

— And I was standing right at the very front.

Claire dries her hand on the hip of her dress and wonders now where it is she should sit. Should she go right to the heart of the matter, onto the sofa? But that might be a bit much, a bit forward, right beside Marcia, who has all the eye-gaze. And yet to stand on the outside might be noticed too, as if she’s not part of them, trying to be separate. Then again, she needs to be mobile, not hem herself in with the coffee table, she has to be able to get up and make refreshments, spread the breakfast out, take orders, make everyone feel at home. Instant or ground? Sugar or not?

She smiles at Gloria and edges across toward her, lifts the belted ashtray off the arm of the chair, places it on the table with a soft rattle, and sits down, feels the thick of Gloria’s hand on her back, a reassurance.

— Go on, please, go on. Sorry.

— And I was a little too late to watch the sunrise, but I thought I’d stand up there anyway. It’s pretty. The city. At that hour. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it but it’s pretty. And I was just daydreaming, really, when I looked up and I saw a helicopter in the air and, well, you all know me and helicopters.

They know indeed, and it makes the air somber a moment but Marcia doesn’t seem to notice, and she coughs for a pause, a fraction of silence, respect, really.

— So I’m watching this helicopter and it’s hanging in the air, almost like it’s doing a double take. Up there, but not very well. Suspended, like. But rocking back and forth.

— Landsakes.

— And I’m thinking about how Mike Junior would hang a much better turn than that, how he’d handle the craft so much better, I mean he was the Evel Knievel of helicopters, his sergeant said so. And I thought maybe there’s something wrong with it, you know? I had that dread. You know, hanging there.

— Oh, no, says Jacqueline.

— I couldn’t hear the engine so I didn’t really know. And then, suddenly, behind the helicopter, I saw this little flyspeck. No bigger than an insect, I swear to you. But it’s a man.

— A man?

— Like an angel? says Gloria.

— A flyman?

— What sort of man?

— Flying?

— Where?

— I just got the heebie-jeebies.

— It’s a guy, says Marcia, on a tightrope. I mean, I didn’t know it right away, I didn’t figure it out just like that, but what it is, there’s a guy on a tightrope.

— Where?

— Shh, shh, says Janet.

— Up there. Between the towers. A million miles up. We could just about see him.

— What’s he doing?

— Tightroping!

— A funambulist.

— What?

— Oh, my God.

— Does he fall?

— Shh.

— Oh, don’t tell me he falls.

— Shh!

— Please don’t tell me he falls.

— Shh already, says Janet to Jacqueline.

— So I tapped the shoulder of this young guy beside me. One of those ponytailed ones. And he’s like, What, lady? Like he’s real annoyed that I disturbed his little standing sleep or dream or whatever it is he’s doing at the front of the boat. And I said, Look. And he said, What?

— Mercy.

— And I pointed it out, the little flyman, and then he said a bad word, you’ll excuse me, Claire, in your house, I’m sorry, but he said, Fuck.

And Claire wants to say: Well, I’d say fuck too, if I were me. I’d say it backward and forward and around the block, fuck this and fuck that and fuck it all once, twice, three times. But all she does is smile at Marcia and give her what she hopes is a nod that understands that it’s absolutely no problem to say fuck, on Park Avenue, on a Wednesday, at a coffee morning, in fact it’s probably the best thing to say, given the circumstances, maybe they should all say it in unison, make a singsong out of it.

— And then, says Marcia, everyone around us started looking up and before I knew it even the captain of the ferry was out and he had binoculars with him and he said, That guy’s on a tightrope.

— For real?

— Now you can only imagine. The whole deck, full of people. Their early commute. Shoulder to shoulder. And someone’s walking a tightrope. Between those new buildings, the World Towery thingymajigs.

— Trade.

— Center.

— Oh, those?

— Listen to me.

— Those monstrosities, says Claire.

— And then this young guy, with the ponytail…

— The fuck guy? says Janet with a half-giggle.

— Yes. Well, he starts saying that he’s sure, stocksure, five hundred and fifty percent, that it’s a projection, that someone is projecting it up on the sky, and maybe it’s a giant white sheet, and the image is coming from the helicopter, it’s being beamed across from some sort of camera or other, he had all the technical terms.

— A projection?

— Like a TV thing? says Jacqueline.

— Circus, maybe.

— And I tell him that they can’t do that from a helicopter. And he looks at me, like, Yeah, lady. And I say it to him again: They can’t do that. And he says, And what do you know about helicopters, lady?

— Never!

— And I tell him I know a hell of a lot about ’copters, actually.

And she does. Marcia knows a hell of a hell of a hell of a lot about her helicopters, her hell of helicopters.

She has told them, in her own house, on Staten Island, that Mike Junior had been on his third tour of duty, routine fly mission over the coast at Qui Nhon, bringing cigars to some general or other in a Huey with the 57th Medical Detachment — cigars, can you imagine? and why the hell were the medevacs flying cigars? — and it was a good helicopter, top speed of ninety knots, she said. The figures had trilled off her tongue. It had something wrong with the steering column, she had said, and had gone into detail about the engine and the gearing ratio and the length of the two-bladed metal tail rotor, when what really mattered, all that truly mattered, was that Mike Junior had clipped the top of a goalpost, of all things, a soccer goalpost, only six feet off the ground — and who in the world plays soccer in Vietnam? — which sent the whirligig spinning and he landed awkwardly, sideways, and he smashed his head awkwardly, broke his neck, no flames, even, just a freak fall, the helicopter still intact; she had played it over in her mind a million times, and that was it, and Marcia woke at night dreaming of an army general opening and reopening the cigar boxes, finding bits and pieces of her son inside.