A Kind of Flying: Selected Stories by Ron Carlson

perhaps celebration. But this time as I walked through the kitchen and saw the bottles standing on the counter, I don’t know, I was worried. Our normal life was amazing; why did I want to tamper with it? But then I thought: okay, if this is what I have to do to create another human being, to have a son or daughter with whom to play catch and Scrabble, and to show Picasso and Chagall, and to teach how to fish and to cook a good garlic sauce for spaghetti squash, someone to send to the fridge for another beer and who will chase his sister through the house with a pair of scissors and to lend the car keys to and to ground for two weeks for being late for some ridiculous curfew and to spend two hundred thousand dollars on and to leave all my stuff to, my collection of Monster Magazines, my hand-tied flies, my railroad watch, though it is broken, and someone to fake-right, go-left past for the hoop, and to paint a thousand versions of before I die, then okay, I’ll do it. I entered the living room.
    Ruth Wellner gave me the hardest ride with her eyeballs I’d ever had. “Hi, everybody!” I said. “How’s the township?”
    Story smiled at me, which is great about her. She always smiles at me at first. Then, of course, she said, “What’s going on, Dan?” I thought for a moment that she had read my mind or had seen the two lumps of jade in my pocket, but then she went on: “What have you done to the house?”
    “Oh! Yeah.” I hadn’t thought of an answer, especially in front of the county attorney. “It’s a conceptual piece I’m trying.”
    “Garlic?”
    “This one’s garlic.” I said, wishing I’d grabbed a beer. “It’s been done with apples.” I nodded, believing what I’d said myself. “It’s only a temporary piece,” I explained, waving my hands as a kind of truce. Ruth leaned back and shook her head imperceptibly, a subtle gesture they all learn in law school which means: “I don’t believe a word of it, you lying bastard.” But Story smiled at me again, a new smile this time, the ancient smile of women who know their men.
    “You missed your class, you know.”
    “Oh, sure,” I said affirmatively. “Sure, sure. That’s wonderful.” And it was wonderful in my crazy head. I could see my students waiting for the keys to unlock their lockers, grumbling and then drifting away. Mary Ann Buxton would have drifted right to the department chairman’s office to offer him most of an earful, but it was wonderful. I smiled. I put my hand over the two charms in my pocket and I realized that I was moving through the most centered and affirmative period of my life. And though I couldn’t see them all clearly, there were still things to do.
    NINE
    IN THE morning, I placed the thermometer in Story’s mouth and sang three minutes from the theme song of High Noon, making the “Do not forsake me, oh my darling!” really mournful, and then read the little gauge: “Ninety-seven point nine. Or ninety-eight flat, I can’t tell.”
    I felt an almost impossible intensity, an anticipation that ran me with chills. All my magic was aligned for tonight, all my preparations.
    “You’re in a . . . mood,” Story said cautiously, giving me an odd side glance.
    “Good night’s sleep,” I said trying to suddenly appear mature. I stood and the song rose into my throat. “On this our we-e-edding day-ay!” I sang and headed for the bathroom.
    In the shower steam rose around me rife with garlic, the very smell of babies hovering in the air. There was nothing wrong with us. Tonight was the night.
    Story came into the bathroom just in time to hear the best rhyme in my song:
    “He’d made a vow while in state prison,
    Vow’d it’d be my life or his’n!”
    “Oh, this garlic!” she yelled. “This garlic has got to go!”
    “Tomorrow,” I answered. “Just one more day.”
    “You know what Ruth thinks?”
    “That she could get me off with insanity?”
    “That you’re having an affair.”
    I poked my