Zerostrata Read online

  I sat down at the table and ate a bowl of cereal, slowly, not really having much else to do.

  It was sunny outside and I liked the way the light glinted on the dew clinging to the wrought iron gate. I liked the way the white clouds swirled over the trees across the road. I liked where I was.

  There was a commotion from various rooms around the house. I thought about inspecting it but didn’t think there was much of a need. What it sounded like was assorted things being broken. Not in rapid succession. It didn’t sound like anyone had gone on a rampage or anything. It sounded more like someone was carefully selecting and then methodically destroying these objects. There would be the shatter of something that sounded like glass and then there would be a few moments of silence before something else was broken. Perhaps this something was made of wood, a kind of splintering sound emanating through the house.

  Francis came into the kitchen as I finished my bowl of cereal and said Mother wanted me to fix the grandfather clock in the hallway.

  “But all the hands fell off. It’s been that way for days.”

  “She said you could fix it.”

  I agreed, putting my bowl in the sink and leaving the kitchen in search of the grandfather clock. It was a beautiful clock, ridiculously expensive. Part of me didn’t want to put the hands back on the clock. Part of me didn’t want to know what time it was. The more aware of time I became the slower it would go. If I actually knew what time it was, I would probably be checking the clock at regular intervals, mentally pushing it along and feeling every slow dripping minute as some kind of strict and unique torture.

  I opened up the heavy door of the clock and picked the hour hand up from the ledge. Wouldn’t it be nice if it was like eight o’clock? I thought. That would be right about the time the girl usually took her runs and I now thought I had every right to openly approach her.

  I stuck the hour hand in somewhere between the seven and the eight on the clock. Then I put the minute hand on the nine. I probably did it all wrong. I would be lucky if the clock worked at all. For all I knew the minute hand went under the hour hand. I had no idea.

  Then I shut the door to the grandfather clock and a strange feeling rushed through my body.

  Suddenly, I smelled food coming from the kitchen. Zasper did a painful-looking somersault off the steps to my left, disappearing before he could hit the bottom, consumed by time. The sky darkened outside. I peeked into the kitchen and saw Mother, Tricky and Mr. Donovan first sitting down at the dinner table and then sitting back in their chairs, satiated.

  Mother, seeing me, said, “Thanks for fixing that clock.”

  I nodded and went outside. I reached the trail and stood there, waiting. I waited in between the second and the third turn. I didn’t want the girl to think I was too eager.

  I saw her rounding the second turn. She didn’t run nearly as quickly today as she had the other nights and when she saw me, she slowed down a little, walking toward me. I waited for an embrace or a kiss or something. Instead she stuck out her hand. She wore a white gown that looked about a century out of date. Suddenly, taking her hand in mine, I felt like some kind of awful trespasser.

  “I guess I should introduce myself,” she said. “My name is Gretel Something.”

  “Of course it is.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “My name is Hansel Nothing.”

  “Incestuous.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “How would you like to do something different tonight?”

  “Like what?”

  “Follow me.”

  She turned to her right, toward the middle of the little patch of woods.

  “Tonight I want to take you to the moon. So we can talk and no one can listen in.”

  “Your mother…”

  “My grandmother. My parents died when I was very young.”

  “So where is The Moon?” I thought maybe she was talking about a bar or a coffee shop or something.

  “Why, it’s right up there, silly.” She pointed to the full white thing in the sky.

  “Oh, okay.”

  “You think I’m kidding?”

  “Well, no, it’s just, well, that’s an awful long trip. I don’t see how we can make it.”

  “But it’s not that long at all. Look.”

  She looked up, just above our heads, at a rope ladder descending from the sky.

  “You go first,” she said.

  I took the first rung of the ladder in my hands and slowly started climbing it. Occasionally I glanced back to make sure she was still there. The ladder was very wobbly and I didn’t want to accidentally shake her off.

  She was right, the moon wasn’t very far away at all. It only took us a few minutes and I found it a lot more comfortable than I thought it would be.

  Chapter Sixteen

  So This is What the Moon is Like

  I climbed from the ladder onto the surface of the moon, turning and helping Gretel.

  “You decided to wear clothes this evening?” I asked.“Yeah.”

  “I hope I didn’t ruin your running.”

  “Not at all.”

  “Why did you run naked before?”

  “Because I wanted to. I liked the way it felt. Even in the cold, it felt good because I was only outside for a while and I knew the house would be nice and warm when I came back to it.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “We should lie down somewhere. The stars are really beautiful up here.”

  We walked along the surface of the moon until she found a spot that looked right and said, “Here is good.”

  She plopped down onto the moon’s gray dust. I plopped down next to her.

  “This is a lot more comfortable than I imagined it would be.”

  “Did you often imagine lying on the moon?”

  “A couple of times, maybe. I always thought it would be a lot rockier. But this is like a bed. Very nice.”

  “Not many people get to come up here.”

  “I would guess not. Wow, the stars are nice.”

  “Better than any place else.”

  We lay there, looking out at space, at all the twinkling stars. They were larger than they were on earth. Not a lot larger. But enough to make them more impressive. And I saw them more clearly.

  I couldn’t believe I was lying here next to this girl. And she wasn’t just the girl anymore. She had a name.

  “It’s interesting that you’re named ‘Gretel.’”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I thought my mother was the only person who used names from books and stories she liked.”

  “I don’t know why my mother named me that. I think she always hoped I would get lost in a forest and eaten by a witch. But then she died and I got to live with one.”

  “Your grandmother?”

  “She’s not a very nice person.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “She likes to keep me in the house. She doesn’t like for me to leave.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Old enough to be out on my own but I would hate to leave her alone in that old house all by herself.”

  “Do you go to school?”

  “Not for a while.”

  “Does your grandmother ever call me and leave hateful and accusatory messages?”

  “Yeah, that’s probably her. Every time I mention someone, that’s when she calls them and leaves messages. She’s really quite harmless. At least, I think she’s harmless.”

  “So you mentioned me?”

  “Maybe.”

  “But she was leaving the messages before we ever…”

  “I know. I think I mentioned you the first day you came home.”

  “Really. You knew about that?”

  “Well, it’s kind of a small town, we’ve lived in the neighborhood for a very long time and neither one of us hardly ever leaves. You hear things.”

  “I just didn’t think something like that would be worth mentioning. It’s not exa
ctly like it was big news or anything.”

  “Except it was kind of big news. In a town like Grayson, when people leave, and they leave all the time, the town still has a way of keeping tabs on them. Like we all know where people go to college and what they’re doing and in what state and all that. All it takes is asking a couple of people and keeping your ears open and you learn all kinds of things.”

  “Really? I never even thought about the people I went to school with after I stopped going.”

  “You’re an exception. Nobody knew what happened to you. You graduated high school. You left and then what? There weren’t really even any rumors. So what have you been doing for the last ten years?”

  “I don’t really know.”

  “That’s not true, is it? Do you really not know?”

  “It’s more like I can’t remember.”

  “Maybe you don’t want to remember.”

  “Or maybe it’s not worth remembering.”

  Gretel scooted over from her place on the moon until she pressed up against me.

  “I’m sure it’s worth remembering,” she said. “Have you even tried?”

  “Not really. It sounds so weird. I have a couple of theories.”

  “What are they?”

  “You probably don’t want to hear them.”

  “No, I want to. Theories fascinate me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they change all the time. If they didn’t change then you couldn’t call them theories. I like change.”

  “Me too. Okay, well, when I left school, I think I wanted to be a writer. No, I know I wanted to be a writer and so I did some writing.”

  “Did you get anything published?”

  “I think I did. But then I stopped.”

  “Why did you stop?”

  “I think I went sort of crazy. I started to feel all these strange emotions all the time. I thought that when I left my house I would have left all the doom behind but I just took it with me and there it was in my brain and when I woke up in the mornings my hands would be shaking and I’d go through the rest of the day telling myself everything was going to be okay even though I knew everything was probably not going to be okay and it just started to consume all my thoughts and I didn’t have any more time for writing because I couldn’t find room for all those thoughts. Or, maybe, I had a couple of things published but they were really violent or mean and I wanted to write something that was beautiful. You know? Something without any violence or hate or anything in it but I don’t think I knew how I was going to do that. And it was a paradox, you know. I always wrote because it was like building something, it was the closest I ever came to making something and if I was going to make something then I wanted it to be something beautiful, not ugly or destructive. And yet, every time I sat down to write, that was the only thing that came out and I just started wondering what the point was.”

  “So you spent ten years wondering what the point was?”

  “No, and here’s the really strange part—I think, somewhere along the line, I went to hell.”

  “You went to hell? What do you mean? You became like a wreck or something?”

  “No, I mean I went to Hell. Like the really biblical kind of Hell with demons and Satan and all that stuff.”

  “Was it scary?”

  “I don’t know. I think that’s the part I don’t remember too well. I think it was dark and hot and cold all at the same time and maybe a little bit painful too but it’s all very cloudy. That’s stupid, I’m sure I didn’t go to Hell.”

  “No you’re not.”

  “I don’t even believe in Hell. I’m not sure. I think I really did go there and when I came back, when I came back home and started remembering again, my mother said it smelled like I was burning and I was so thirsty... All I could think about doing was getting a drink of water, just something to get rid of the burning in my throat.”

  “Well, I’m glad you came back.”

  “I’m glad I found you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I think you’re everything I need.”

  “But you don’t even know me.”

  “And I don’t ever really want to know you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If you can ever completely know someone then that means that person has stopped changing, has stopped thinking, has stopped doing anything it is that makes a person unique and individual. The fun is in getting to know someone. Experiencing things with them, watching them change and just hoping they don’t change so much they no longer interest you.”

  “I don’t really think about things like that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, I’m not allowed out of the house so much.”

  “So what do you do all day, you and your grandmother? Does your grandfather live with you?”

  “No.”

  “So what do you do?”

  “I don’t know. The time just passes. I lie in my bed most of the day and dream about life outside that house and look forward to my run. Grandma rearranges the house on a nearly daily basis. Right now, she has all of the furniture nailed to the walls. She says this makes it easier to vacuum and sweep everywhere but I know that is a lie because there really isn’t any cleaning to be done with just the two of us living there.”

  “It must get awfully boring.”

  “No, I’ve gotten used to it. I like to lie in my bed and dream. I can dream about something every day. Something new. I have created societies in my head and then watched the fall of their civilization by the end of the day. And when I run, it clears everything out so I have to start again the next day.”

  “Do you have books or a television or anything?”

  “Oh, yeah, we have quite an extensive library. I’ve read most of the books a dozen times. And we have cable television, all of that. A person can’t lie around and dream all the time.”

  “What about this place? Did you dream it?”

  “The moon? No, that’s been overhead for well, since the beginning of time, I guess.”

  “I know that but, come on, one can’t really climb to the moon using a ladder made of rope. It’s just too far away.”

  “Are we here?”

  “Where?”

  “On the moon?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Look around you. Does it look like the moon? Does it feel like the moon?”

  “No, I already told you I thought it felt more comfortable.”

  “But, other than that?”

  “Other than that, I would have to say it is the moon.”

  “So why can’t you just rest and enjoy it? Tell people you have been to the moon and then laugh at them when they don’t believe you.”

  We talked like that for the rest of the evening. Once we got tired of lying we walked around the surface of the moon. We looked at the earth and didn’t even think about talking about our place on that big blue thing. We didn’t need to talk about our place on it. We had found our place. Our place was wherever the other one was. That was okay with both of us. It was almost like talking with myself. Even the silences seemed infused with a secret knowledge. We held hands as we walked around the moon and it felt right and it felt good. I had never felt anything like that before.

  The conversation was easy but it wasn’t even the focal point of our time together. And it was refreshing that all of this took place on the moon because there wasn’t really anything to observe there, nothing to comment on. It made the conversation more pure.

  And it had to end, but again it ended with the prospect of tomorrow and, even though I would never be ready to leave her, the idea of seeing her again made the absence that much more bearable. She said it was time to go and I started to lead her back to the ladder but she stopped me.

  “No, the ladder is gone. It won’t be there.”

  “How do we get down?”

  “I think we’ll have to get back using the hot air balloon.”

  “Really?”


  “Yes. Hot air balloons are very entertaining.”

  I watched the approach of a bright yellow hot air balloon descend to a spot on the moon just beside us. I climbed in first and then helped her into the basket.

  Again, the time seemed to pass all too quickly.

  We approached the earth at dawn. She leaned against the side of the basket and I stood behind her, my arms around her stomach, my nose pressed against the back of her head and smelling the clean scent of her hair that held all the magic of the moon and the stars and long runs through the rain-filled night.

  The balloon touched down in the middle of the little park in the middle of the little neighborhood in Grayson. I wanted our parting to be long and drawn out. I wanted to exchange kisses. I wanted to bring her into me to feel the press of her heat, something to take with me, but she said, “I have to get home before my grandma wakes up. The imposter I sent there after my alleged run has probably fled by now.”

  “You have an imposter?”

  “I have to go.”

  And then she was off in the lightening dawn. I climbed out of the basket and began walking home. I looked back to take in the grandeur of the bright yellow hot air balloon but it had disappeared.

  When I reached the house, I saw Zasper standing in the middle of the backyard with flashlights, signaling something in the sky.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Fixer

  “I did it! I did it!” Zasper shouted.

  I joined in the excitement, hopping up and down, unaware of what Zasper had done but feeling as though, in some way, I too had done whatever “it” was.

  We did this weird little dance, both of us hopping up and down, hands clasping each other’s forearms as we bounced around.

  Both of us being essentially lazy and slothful, it didn’t take us very long to get tired. And then we stopped and stared curiously at one another.

  “What did you do, Zasper?”