Marie-Helene Bertino - Safe as Houses

What I did that week or any of the time I returned home during college doesn’t matter. I was itchy and restless without them. I listened to Dead Letter Office on my headphones and ignored my family. The only thing that mattered happened on Christmas morning, when through the haze of present opening and the clinking of my parents’ highballs, a phone call came from the Vanilla dorms.

Ian said, People are camped on Nietzsche Field. People are losing faith. This isn’t funny.

I know, I said. I’ve been watching the local news.

If Corrina was our mouth and Marigold our sense of humor, Ian was our conscience. Call her and tell her to knock it off, he said. Tell her even if we don’t agree with them we should leave them alone. It’s Christmas.

Corrina answered the phone by saying, Get me out of here, I’m dying.

Ian is upset about the church, I said.

Who cares about the church? I can’t take any more family togetherness, Van.

He’s saying people are losing faith and freaking out. He wants you to call it off.

There was a pause. I heard singing in the background. They’re singing again, Corrina said. Like the fucking Von Trapps.

I was silent.

Fine. She hung up the phone.

That night I watched the news in my father’s den. The newscaster joked about a local contest to see whose dog made the cutest Santa. Then her face turned sober as she reported on what she called the ongoing situation on Vanilla University’s campus. A live shot showed the field, a handful of religious campers praying. Inside the cathedral, two science professors researched in midair.

A pointy-nosed reporter interviewed one of the campers, who said, I can’t see it but I know it’s there.

Behind her the church flickered, then reappeared. The group of campers oh-my-god-ed. One yelled, It’s back!

The reporter turned around, her hand flying to her earpiece, suddenly burdened with instructions from her studio.

…

After Charles is asleep, I put the Toyota in neutral and reverse it, lightless, out of our driveway. I drive past the venerable stone houses of Vanilla, onto Vanilla’s campus, to Nietzsche Field. I pull up to the southeast corner of the field, where I can see the science labs, the business building, and, like a glowing pearl anchor, Saint Vanilla Cathedral. I light a cigarette, suck in the first drag, then let it out slowly. This creates the emptying out of my mind I hope for. I listen to an old mix tape.

The field is infused with mist, making the night seem malleable, like I can do things to it — tear it in half like a sheet of loose-leaf or gather it into a ball. On my tape deck Michael Stipe sings about standing on the shoulders of giants.

I watch the mist change shape, and in the shape-shifting mist, something moves that is not mist or the trunk of any tree. I focus on it until I am certain it is not a trick of fog or night. Someone is sitting on the field.

He raises his hand in greeting. I understand I should get out of the car and cross to him but my fingers slip on the handle. I try again. I get out of the car. He waits.

When I am halfway across the field we exchange a wordless salute. By then I know it is Ian. God and time have left his boyish face alone.

It’s been thirteen years, I say.

He stands. I would have come sooner but there were difficulties.

A laugh launches out of me, too loud. I reach out without thinking, then stop. Can I touch you?

I don’t know, he says. Try.

You’re cold. We both look at my hand on his arm. Have you seen the others?

Corrina. She’s in California. South of San Diego.

I think of her there. Cactus, bright sun, dust.

Do you know how long it takes to drive to California? He stares at me in the way he has that tells me the question he is asking is not the question he is asking.

From here? I say, not understanding.

He smiles. It would be fun.

Let’s go tonight, I say, playing an old game. I’ll drive.

The tree’s light cuts diamonds onto his face.

Have you seen Marigold too? I say.

He nods. He’s who got me here.

From a pocket of his hooded sweatshirt, Ian pulls out a small card and unfolds it. It is the Vanilla Mall circular. On the front, Charles beams while behind him I use thigh strength to stay on a carousel horse near the second-level food court. Wild horses…

Ian shakes his head. I can’t believe you married that douche clown.

You know what they say about life not always turning out the way you expect.

No kidding. He laughs; it is Ian’s giggle, and then there is no more distance. Marigold said I should find you and knock some sense into you.

It was hard, I say, after you all left.

I specifically told you not to get jaded, Ian says.

We can talk about all of this on our way to California.

For the first time, he looks sad. In the light of Saint Vanilla Cathedral I see dull paunches under his eyes and chin. I wish, he says.

Let’s stay here then. I sit down on the grass.

Let’s. He sits down.

I say to myself several times before I say to him, Can I hold your hand?

He says, I would be offended if you didn’t.

The air smells wet like autumn but it is brick-hot summer. We face the other side of the field where my car is parked.

I love that you still drive that thing, he says. He says, It’s your turn, Van. This one’s for you.

I’m fine, I say. I don’t need anything.

Stop punishing yourself, he says.

Stop telling me what to do.

We sit in silence, not looking at each other. I am afraid any change in posture or the pressure of my hand will make him go away. After a while he says, This is really nice, but other than that we are quiet.

…

Toward the end of our junior year, the Wafer reported that although they had said before that Katie Freeman was about to die, she was now, like, really about to die. That’s when Ian had the idea to transport a kidney. Where do we even get a kidney, Marigold said, and Ian said they could find a matching one from someone who'd just died but wasn’t an organ donor. The Freemans would be so thrilled they wouldn’t ask questions.

And we know it’s a match because we’re all doctors?

Practice, said Ian. Spells.

That’s stealing, said Marigold.

They had never transported anything like this before, but Ian figured if they could control a pack of wild turkeys and disappear a church they could move a kidney from one place to another. He wanted to make up for launching what he called a collective crisis of faith. Corrina pointed out we had also inspired what the Wafer was calling a modern-day miracle. Along with best-looking campus that year, Hot magazine voted us most holy.

Please? Ian said. We did the turkeys for Marigold, the church for Corrina; this one could be for me.

Then the next one is for Van, Corrina said.

They were kind enough to include me even though I had as much power as a can of soup. We were a unit by then, known around campus. I knew we would always be friends the way I knew R.E.M. would never break up. I took notes as they figured out how to find and move an organ through space.

All we have to do is set up a mental formula that can identify the kidney for us, Corrina said. If that, then this. A divining spell of sorts.

The next afternoon Ian burst into my dorm room, where I, Corrina, and Marigold were arguing over ordering pizza or sandwiches, and said he had found a kidney. Its location had come to him in a dream. It’s in Seattle, he said, and belongs to a nurse who died in a three-car pile-up.

Pizza, said Marigold, or I’m fucking out of here.

On May 15 of my junior year, Jessica Freeman, PTA organizer and mother of Katie Freeman, owner of the much-discussed and prayed-for organ, opened her freezer to fetch that night’s dinner. Instead of a Cornish hen she found a cooler that contained a kidney. She fell into an unconscious heap on the floor.