Kathleen Ann Goonan - The String.pdf

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The String
by
Kathleen Ann Goonan
Dan tried to ignore the sadness that pervaded him whenever he and Jessica did
something fun together. He smiled at her and her smile told him, "Don't
worry,
Dad, it's all right."
She was much more grown up than him. But that's what a fatal illness often
did
to a child, the doctors had told him.
Cincinatti was always cool in spring, and often overcast. Dan squinted at the
sky as he unrolled the brilliant dragon kite Jessica had picked out and
snared
its breast with a string.
"Come on, Dad," she said, hopping from one foot to another. "What's taking
you
so long?"
"I'm kind of concerned about those trees," he said. Huge oaks surrounded the
ballfield across the street from their house, but it was the clearest place
around. The gusting wind held the sweet tang of rejuvination. How many
springs
would his daughter see? He had to try to knot the string twice; his hand
trembled the first time and he missed poking it through.
Jessica was short for her age, eight, and she wheezed a lot. Dan knew she
would
be dead in a few years but tried not to think about it too much. He wouldn't
live forever either. Anita was bitter about their daughter having cystic
fibrosis, and seemed to want to blame it all on Dan, even though she knew
that
it took recessive genes from both parents.
Jessica lifted the kite, and its fanciful wings filled with wind. "It's
gorgeous," she said. "Purple, red, and yellow."
He smiled at her, and she grinned back, her pale brown hair flying out from
the
hat pulled over her ears, her green eyes full of knowledge no child should
have
to bear, learned as she lay gasping for breath in an endless stream of
anonymous
hospital beds, stuck full of needles which dripped experimental drugs which
never worked into her veins, which were getting harder and harder to find.
"Well, what are you waiting for?" he asked.
He watched the string run through her hands as the wind took the kite. She
played it out until the dragon floated high and small, then began to play
with
it, making it swoop, its long tail swirling like invisible writing on the
gray
sky.
Then she shrieked as a strong gust pulled the end of the string, which Dan
had
wrapped around a stick, from her hand. The dragon hung suspended for a
moment,
then zigzagged and plummeted into an oak tree.
"Oh no," said Jessica, looking stunned.
"It's okay," he said. He climbed the tree, cut the string with his penknife,
pulled it the kite from the branches, and tossed it down to the ground. It was
a
little ripped up, but he thought he could fix it.
When he was almost down, he saw the tangled string, stuck in a lower branch.
He
 
reached over, worked it loose, and stuck it in his pocket. Then, holding
hands,
he and Jessica walked back to the old house he'd lived in since he was a
child.
#
Later that night, when he finished putting the dishes away and Jessica was in
bed, he remembered the string, and got it out of his pocket. Anita, on one
side
of the huge kitchen which served as sort of a living room too, was entrenched
in
her CAD, working on some specs she'd brought home. She was so good her firm
had
paid to have the computer assisted design setup here at home as well as at
the
office.
She looked up. "What's that?" she asked.
"Just the kite string."
"Well, we don't need any more clutter around here. Throw it away."
Instead, Dan sat down at the table and studied it. "Look," he said, "it's not
really a knot."
"You couldn't get much more knotted than that," Anita said.
"No, look: one end stayed attached to the stick. One end stayed attached to
the
kite. It's not a knot. The ends never crossed. Theoretically, it's just a
perfectly straight string."
"Right," said Anita. "Sure. That's exactly what it looks like to me. Well,
I've
got to get to bed. I guess it's my turn to take Jessica to physical therapy
tomorrow," she said, with that familiar resentful edge to her voice.
"I would, but I've got a meeting in the afternoon." He was a structural
engineer. He was aware that Anita, a brilliant, moody architect, sometimes
found
his methodical, dogged approach to life dull. He often wished he were more
spontaneous, but he couldn't help himself. He had long since resigned himself
to
being in the background and assisting her rapidly advancing career in any way
he
could.
Dan sat at the table for half an hour, studying the string. Finally, he got
two
knives out of the drawer and tied one end to each knife.
Then he started to pull little loops from the tight core.
Each loosening opened other possible avenues of unravelling, and he stared
into
the heart of the string, more and more fascinated. Each time he created some
slack, he followed it down into the core, pulling and teasing, until it was
lost
in the nest of tightness. Each time, he felt a little ping of joy when the
core
of the string became more and more revealed.
It was three a.m. before he stopped, surprised at the time. How could he have
become so absorbed? He was about to untie the string from the knives and
throw
it away when he stopped, smiled, and chucked the whole thing in a drawer. At
least it was something to do.
He went to bed feeling better than he had in a long time.
#
When he got home from work that night Jessica ran to meet him and said,
 
"Guess
what? My lung capacity increased."
"Is that true?" Dan asked Anita, who was peeling carrots.
She didn't turn, but stopped what she was doing as she spoke. "That's what
they
said," she replied, in the terribly even voice she used whenever they
discussed
Jessica's medical problems. Then she went back to scraping carrots.
"That's wonderful, pumpkin," Dan said, and picked Jessica up, tossed her in
the
air. They'd learned to celebrate about anything, but this was something
extraordinary.
"Yeah," she said, laughing. She went over and opened the silverware drawer so
she could set the table. "What's this?" she said, and pulled out the wad of
string dangling from one of the knives. "Is this the kite string?"
"Oh, Dan, I thought I told you to throw that away," said Anita.
Dan grabbed it, feeling unaccountably protective. "It's fun," he said. "You'd
have to pay a lot of money for a puzzle as good as this." He put it up on a
shelf. "Here, I'll help you set the table," he said.
After dinner, when everything was put away, Anita flipped on her CAD again.
Her
work was never done. Jessica started her homework, and Dan got his string
down
off the shelf and started to play with it.
It was wound quite tightly. He needed something to slide underneath the
strands
and pull them. Absently, he got up, rummaged in the drawer, and got two
oyster
forks. Hooking one through the central morass, he used the other to work a
loop
loose.
As he concentrated, he found himself thinking not about the string, but about
Jessica. He tried to push back the relief and happiness he felt about the
lung
capacity--after all, within the progress of the disease, it only meant a
temporary surcease--but joy nonetheless that Jessica might have a time of
easier
breathing, however short, flooded him. Despite himself, he imagined her
running,
playing, like other children, unburdened by her constant unnatural prescience
of
her own mortality. She was in the baseball field, up to bat, her little rear
end
stuck out as she leaned forward from the waist, grasping the bat. Her hair
streamed back from her face. "Put 'er here," she yelled at the pitcher.
"What are you doing, Dan?" asked Anita, as her shadow fell across the table.
"Well," he said, startled back into the present, "these are the rules. Since
the
ends didn't cross when this was made, the rule is that I have to straighten
it
out without pulling the ends through. They always have to stay on the
outside."
"Good lord," she said. "Well, it's after midnight." He looked up and saw she
had
her nightgown on. "I've been in bed for an hour. You know you don't feel good
if
you don't get enough sleep, and I don't know when you got to bed last night."
"You're right," he said, and put the string up on the shelf and went to bed.
But the image of Jessica rounding the bases persisted into his dreams.
#
 
Three weeks later, he had still not solved the string. He worked on it
nightly,
much to Anita's disgust. "It's getting dirty," she said.
One Tuesday evening, Dan looked up at a knock on the screen door. "Frank," he
said. "Come on in."
Frank Jones, a widower from down the street, did, and the door slammed shut
behind him. Crickets were gaining in volume and the smell of new-cut grass
wafted into the kitchen. Frank, a tall thin man with a good head of
snow-white
hair, though he was almost seventy, put his hands on his hips and frowned.
"What
the hell are you doing?" he asked.
"Behaving like a crazy man, that's what," said Anita from her terminal.
"Dad's untying the string," said Jessica as she rushed through the kitchen.
"Where do you think you're going?" asked Dan.
"I'm just going out to play hide-and-seek with the kids."
"You've got exactly fifteen minutes."
"Oh, Dad!"
"I mean it." Dan was secretly pleased. It had been years since she'd felt
well
enough to keep going for so long, and now she'd be out with the neighborhood
kids well after dark each night if he didn't put his foot down.
"Oh, all right," she grumbled, and rushed out the door.
"Get a beer, Frank, and sit down," said Dan, not lifting his eyes from his
puzzle.
"Don't mind if I do." The old man opened the refrigerator, chose a beer, and
pulled up a chair made of aluminum tubing. The seat and back were covered
with
marbleized dark green oilcloth.
"So what's up?"
Frank's bottle of Rolling Rock hissed as he opened it. "Ahh, nothing much. I
wish the kids lived closer, I guess. You know, I got good days and bad days,
just like always."
It had been three years since his wife had died suddenly of a stroke, and
Frank
came in regularly to complain about the loneliness of his life, which Dan
knew
was quite real.
He remembered Mrs. Jones as he bent over the string, listening to Frank's
laments. She had been a bustling, happy woman of the starched laundry school.
She raised two boys while Frank put in his thirty years at the mattress
factory,
all the while tending to her massive garden and baking like a master chef.
He also remembered, quite vividly, the Joneses on their evening walk, hand in
hand, strolling down the oak-lined street daily for as long as he could
remember. He remembered Frank teaching him how to pitch a softball across the
street at the park, because his father, though an affable sort, maintained an
unfashionable dislike for the sport of the day. Frank's kind face had been
younger then, and Dan unaccountably recalled that his eyes had beamed with
happiness when, one day, he had looked right into Dan's and said, "You know,
this is a lot of fun." Dan had realized, even though he was only ten, that
"this" didn't just mean teaching him how to fake out the batter, but was a
deep
and basic satisfaction and appreciation of life itself.
Dan glanced up at Frank now. He was staring out the window, and his face
looked
blank and old. Dan didn't know why it had to be that way, why life had to
wash
through him like a wave and recede. The old man seemed like a discarded pot
or
 
piece of furniture, and it pained him.
He got up and went to the door. "Jessica!" he shouted. "It's been half an
hour.
Get in here right now!"
Jessica came pounding up the steps. Her cheeks were flushed in the porch
light,
and she dashed in under his arm and rushed upstairs before he could say a
word.
"Kids," said Frank, but his face looked just as old and dead.
Later than night, after Anita had gone to bed--she seemed resigned now to his
odd obsession--Frank slipped into Dan's mind again. He saw the old man happy
and
useful again, face bright, as he'd been right up to the day of Stella's
death.
Dan was suspended in the feeling of one man's deep contentment with the way
things were, and felt enriched by that sharing. He knew now how rare such a
feeling was.
It was only two evenings later that Frank came back. His step on the porch
was
so light Dan didn't recognize it, and his face was so altered that for a
moment,
looking up from his string, Dan was taken back ten years.
"Come in," said Dan. "You look great."
Frank got his beer and sprawled in the chair, long legs extended, and smiled.
"You know," he said, "after the other night I got to thinking about how often
I
come by and whine, and decided to get up off my butt and do something for
myself. Went over to the day care on 5th Street and they took me on as a
volunteer. I'm telling you, Dan, am I ever glad to get out of that house
every
day. Didn't realize how gloomy it was with the curtains always pulled. Those
kids are so cute."
His face was the face Dan had imagined. In fact, his breathing stopped for a
second as he realized that he'd pictured Frank sitting here just like this,
although he'd imagined that the source of his happiness was instead a new
girlfriend.
"I bet they are," said Dan.
The clicking of computer keys in the corner stopped and Anita said, "I wish
Dan
would do something besides work on that ridiculous string. He needs to get
out
and do something else."
"Like what, Anita?" asked Dan, wondering at the fear he felt about being
separated from his string.
"Like a movie now and then, that's what. Or just going out for dinner. We
haven't done anything in the evening except sit here like two lumps, and I'm
getting tired of it!"
"You should have said something," said Dan, pushing the string away. He was
very
pleasantly surprised, even if Anita was just reacting jealously to his
attention
to the string. "I think we can just make the eight o'clock movie if we hurry."
"Who's going to watch Jessica?"
"I will," said Frank. He often baby-sat, but not usually on such short notice.
"Are you sure?" asked Dan.
"Of course he's sure," said Anita, getting up in a hurry. "Now, where are my
keys?"
While he was at the movie, all Dan could think about was what his next move
would be in the unravelling of the string. He even dreamed of the string now,
and had it memorized, as if it were a chess game he could project. Yet,
 

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