Home Improvements

My brother and I both went over to do some work on my aunt’s house.  Originally we were just there to paint and patch a few things up, but a rivalry developed between us.  We started making these elaborate changes, each of us trying to top the other.  My brother built these brick arches with sloping layers and walkways and high castle ramparts.  In response, I built a huge gaming complex with a bowling alley and a maze-like pool where you could swim from room to room.
 
These constructions piled over each other, one after the another, spreading out over several acres of my aunt’s property, all of it connected by a network of underground tunnels and catacombs.  Somewhere at the far end of it all, quiet and away from everything, was the best part, my crowning touch.  A door at the dead end of a dark tunnel led unexpectedly outside to an open field where there were these two long clear tubes that stretched far up into the sky.  By regulating the pressure and the air currents in both tubes, it allowed a person to rise comfortably in one tube, and descend comfortably in the other.  The ride would take them up into the clouds, high above the world with a grand view of everything for miles around.

When my aunt came home and saw all the work that we had done, she just shook her head and said, "This is what you get when you ask Einstein to paint your house."  She said it with a grin, exasperated but affectionate, amused but amazed.  It was a good thing to hear.   

About My Son

One day I got a letter from a girl that I used to date.  She asked me to come see her, and I followed the address that she gave me to an old run down apartment building.  As I was climbing the stairs, she met me in the stairwell.  She didn't waste any time.  She came right out and told me that I had a son.  A dark-haired, dark-eyed boy peeked out shyly from behind her.

I stayed with them for the next couple of weeks, but oddly enough, all subsequent developments took place in that same stairwell.  We never made it up to the apartment.  I never took my shoes off and settled in where it was comfortable and warm.  We stayed in this cold stairwell like people locked out of their lives, that long waiting slide down the wall, gnawing tense and uncommitted.  The girl went to work and left me with the boy.  He brought a crude crayon drawing over to show me.  I realized that I felt no connection to this kid at all.

A friend of mine finally helped me to see it.  He dropped by the stairwell and told me I had to search my heart; I had to look at the boy's face and see if I saw anything of myself.  I had to accept this unsettled feeling that I had.  I stared into the boy's eyes for a long, long time.  There was nothing.  The girl had made a mistake.  This wasn't my son.  I handed him his drawing back to him, tousled his hair regretfully, and then I turned and headed back down those dank stairs and out of the building.     

Moving the Cosmic Levers

We moved into a new house.  The master bedroom was spacious and the entire ceiling was a huge domed skylight, giving the unmistakable impression of sleeping out in the open air.  Over by the mantelpiece there was a fairly large, rusty, contraption of levers.  The levers were marked "day", "month", etc.  They were heavy and hard to turn and I could feel gears inside the mechanism spinning in different directions as I slid the lever along its track.  Releasing the lever, it would pop up and lock into place.  I moved all of the levers to the proper settings, so that they matched with the current date,year, and time.

Once the mechanism was set, I turned and looked up towards the sky, somehow instinctively knowing that I would see the results of my manipulations there.  Nothing happened at first, but after a blink or two, I began to notice that the stars were moving, swimming, twirling, undulating even.  As it went on, it suggested music, although I heard nothing.  "Because there's no sound in space!", I reminded myself.  I just shook my head at the non-sequitur and smiled up at the orchestration of the stars.