And Then the Gray Heaven Read online

  All Is Full of Love (Björk)

  When I first met B, they were working on rebuilding a relationship with their parents after living in exile with Fran. They weren’t spending much time at home, but they would occasionally attend a church event, especially if it was a music night curated by B’s mom, which meant Alvin would be there. B asked if I wanted to go to a Drum and Dance in the church basement, and apologized to me in advance. I thought they were joking, but they drove me to their family church and we went downstairs to a room where people were setting up chairs and taking hand drums out of bags. I met Alvin that night. We even shared a drum at one point. But the best part was when B and I took a long break from dancing and circled a food table between two mysterious lion sculptures in the Sunday School room, trying to get close to each other and the lions, showing off, telling our best jokes. When they took me home, this song was playing in their car, and we kissed each other without breathing for four minutes and thirty-two seconds.

  22

  In Atlanta, Highway 285 wraps around the perimeter of the city, cutting through the huge interstate Highways 75 and 85 across two axes like an inkblot. 285 blooms out with a bumper-to-bumper mélange of sprawl traffic day and night in the exact shape of white flight, with a big-box grocery store just on the outside of every curve. It takes us an hour to clear the traffic, and we stop at the Super 8 in the northeast part of the city.

  We swim for a little just before the pool closes, and the only other people in the pool room are two kids who are busy throwing diving sticks for each other, and what looks to be their dad, who is really fixated on us. He glares right down at us for straight minutes without even turning his face out of discomfort when I make eye contact. Every now and then, he shakes his head a little. On our way out of the pool, I grab a towel from the hotel stack and make sure to scoot right past him. As I’m passing, I say don’t worry, you can’t catch it. Then I hold the glass door open for Theo and as they walk through, I squeeze their ass just once. They stifle a laugh and we breeze down the hall to our room.

  Such a provocateur, they say.

  We were making him uncomfortable anyway, thought we could at least have a little fun.

  Do you feel like going out? they ask me.

  Big day: can’t be bothered, I say, but I am excited about cable. I turn on the TV.

  Yeah, do you, says Theo. I think I’m going to go out. Is that okay?

  Of course, I say.

  No, really, they say. I could hang out with some cable.

  Really. Go out, enjoy yourself. You know where to find me if you need anything.

  I fall asleep lightning-fast. Theo creeps in a few hours later and goes right into the bathroom. I hear the shower turn on.

  When they collapse into bed, I say hey, good night?

  Oh yeah, they say. Actually lovely.

  Are you drunk?

  Nope.

  Did you have sex?

  Yup.

  Aw, happy Atlanta! I say.

  Happy Atlanta to us all, they say, and then we roll over and face opposite walls.

  Night, I say.

  They reach an arm behind and pat my thigh: night babe.

  Theo drives the early morning leg, and I curl up all groggy and full of my dreams from the night before. In one dream, B speaks in that Twin Peaks garbled half-backwards talk, which they would love: I feel like at one point in real life they told me they would prefer to appear this way and that’s why it’s happening. Dreams are responsive to fantasy, but not in the way we expect.

  In one dream B talks to me about some kind of wolf that the human body releases during sleep. This kind of wolf does not howl, but does perform cereal commercials from the nineties. I know this because B told me to look out for the one wolf that does Apple Jacks, which was my favorite cereal. I ask them what happened to the frog that used to do Apple Jacks commercials, and they say cool melon pink baby, so that’s helpful. B also tells me the moon is looking for me, and then they ask me if I’ve forgotten. So I say, forgotten what, and they say: the human body, when did that happen?

  I tell Theo all this, and they think for a minute, and then say: I’ll bet you’ve been over there brooding trying to answer that question.

  Wouldn’t you be? I say.

  No, you’re not meant to answer the questions you ask yourself in dreams.

  B asked me.

  B is you, they say. Everyone in your dreams is you.

  No, B is B. I say this with such force, Theo raises their eyebrows but doesn’t say anything else. I start glitching with shame. My mouth is open, but nothing keeps coming out. I close my mouth with my hand and look down.

  Theo turns on the radio, and I Want To Break Free is playing, and they say to me: you know this one?

  Yeah, I say quietly.

  Want to sing with me?

  Yeah.

  God knows, god knows, I want to break free.

  23

  Just outside Louisville, we pass a gigantic metal cross and a million rows of corn, which seem high for this time of year. Watching the corn pass relaxes my eyes. I ask Theo how they’re doing because driving gets weird when there’s a pattern like the lines on the road or this, and they tell me about how corn fields are the inspiration for visual white noise.

  I am delighted to learn that pixels come from the doldrums of flyover country. It seems fitting that the American hearth should have such humble beginnings. I have always felt close to television because it is a portal out of this world, but also because it was my most stable connection, my family. Theo’s mom and Tina didn’t have TV until Theo was a teenager, so they are missing a whole nostalgic archive I rely on too heavily to connect with people, which makes for a lot of silence. But I trust the silence between us. We both seem consumed at times by our inner lives and content to be with ourselves side by side. When we’re not singing or playing the one car game we made up where one of us says something and the other one says the first thing that comes to mind (no cheating), there are these long stretches when I work out how I’m feeling and their brain does something good for them too.

  We stop at a rest stop to switch and stretch, and see a dirt road weave up through a cornfield to an old farmhouse. Right on the edge of the road facing the field is the scariest scarecrow I’ve ever seen in my life or in a movie or anywhere.

  What the hell is wrong with that scarecrow? I say, unintentionally grasping Theo’s shirt sleeve.

  I think its face is missing.

  Why! Why would they do that?

  I’m not sure someone did that on purpose, Theo says, looking me over. They laugh. What? I whine.

  What are you so freaked out about?

  This is exactly the kind of thing you always see in a horror movie because if it wasn’t so dark it’d be silly. A nightmare trope. Something like that.

  Maybe we should check it out.

  I follow Theo up the dirt road toward the scarecrow, and finally we’re close enough to see it really is a horror movie scarecrow because bees have built a hive in its hollowed out face. They are swarming around us, and I ask Theo if they think it’s possible to read the scarecrows emotions from their movements like facial expressions, and Theo gives it a second and says:

  Seems like as good a way as any to scramble facial recognition software.

  Maybe one day we’ll be able to order a face hive for that. Reminds me of Samson’s riddle, they say.

  Oh no, is this a bible thing? I ask, moving away from the scarecrow back down the dirt road.

  Yeah, but it’s a rude one at least.

  We slam our doors, and Theo pulls back onto the highway.

  Okay, hit me, I say.

  So Samson kills a lion with his bare hands. Then when he goes back he finds a beehive in the lion’s carcass, and the bees are making honey.

  That’s pretty rude, I say.

  Wait, that’s not even the rude part. Later on, Samson is messing with some people and he tells them this riddle they can’t know the answer to because it�
�s based on this private memory of the lion and the beehive. So they guess for a bit, and then he eventually kills them for getting it wrong, and takes their shirts.

  Super rude.

  Yeah, so rude.

  What’s the riddle though?

  Oh yeah, that’s the best part, they say. “Out of the eater, something to eat; out of the strong, something sweet.”

  Oh that is good. You know what, Samson is just like Carl Akeley.

  Who?

  He was this eccentric taxidermy guy B used to talk about a lot. He did all the original taxidermy for dioramas at the Field Museum and the American Museum too—you’ll see them. He basically changed how natural history museums taxidermied animals and displayed them with this special sculpting technique. He also influenced the landscape painters and foreground artists he worked with. B was obsessed with him.

  Wow, I had no idea there was this secret cult of diorama artists.

  This guy is definitely their god. He would go on these reckless hunting expeditions and get attacked by rhinos and always survive. He saw building museum dioramas as a conservation practice, like even if the animals were all gone from the wild, future generations could interact with a diorama the way we once interacted with animals in their habitats. In the epic diorama display that B restored called The Four Seasons, there are these white-tailed deer that were already endangered at the time Akeley killed and prepared a group of them for this particular exhibit. And meanwhile, he was going on safari with his wife and bringing back a bunch of elephants to stuff himself. It was a weird time for conservation.

  Yeah, seems like the making of a natural history museum was never not going to be grotesque.

  Especially under Akeley. But in the world of restoration he’s a total legend. People love him.

  Of course they do, says Theo. It’s this whole Indiana Jones cowboy complex.

  True, he is even described many places as “swashbuckling.” Oh, and just like Samson, one time a leopard attacked him and he actually punched the leopard from the inside because his hand was already in the leopard’s throat. Then he killed the leopard with his hands, and there’s a famous picture where he’s standing there in a sling gazing at this strung up leopard.

  That can’t be real. Punched from the inside?

  Our very own biblical hero.

  24

  I’m burying B under those white-tailed deer because they’re meticulous and B loved them. They used to point out how even the veins in their heads were carefully preserved by Akeley, how the fur was a little rough in places because that’s what the snow would do. The gallery has been under construction all year for restoration work, but I saw on the website just before we left that visitors are invited back to the Nature Walk next weekend, so I’m a little worried we won’t make it before they close the diorama cases again. I haven’t decided which of The Four Seasons to bury B in, because Winter has the most ground matter to work with, but since I’ll be burying B in snow in New York, I was thinking maybe Autumn. B loved the fall and we never get it in Florida.

  In our room at the Grant Park Travelodge, we go over the plan. The Field Museum is not messing around with security. There are so many more alarms, guards, and complex entry and exit systems to deal with, I am exasperated before we even go in for our morning test visit. We buy a set of museum passes, which cost almost the same as Field Museum tickets, but get us access to the aquarium, the planetarium, and a free donut from Stan’s. I like the idea of having access to the Shedd Aquarium, just steps away from the Field Museum, in case things get dicey and I need to hide out instead of following my escape route back into the city. Since The Four Seasons dioramas are on the Main Level, I can easily get to them and away from them using a number of stairwells and hallways. I won’t be able to leave in the middle of the night this time. There is no way out until morning, which I’m trying to get excited about, since it was my childhood dream to live in a museum and sleep in the exhibit halls with Oreos and a hand radio. The safest places to hide all seem to be on the ground level, which means I would need to take a back stairwell to the diorama and back again undetected. There don’t seem to be alarms on the doors, and fortunately The Field Museum is one of those monoliths where there are a lot of rooms like dark tunnels perfect for sheltering unsanctioned burials and whatnot.

  The Nature Walk and Messages from the Wilderness exhibit is still under construction, with a tent of plastic sheets around the glass cases. I slip behind one piece of plastic to see if I can peer inside The Four Seasons. The Winter diorama had already been sealed, but the others are still open. I freeze in front of the Autumn diorama, where one deer stares directly back at me hauntingly, as if offering permission. I check myself, and remember that’s probably what Akeley thought just before he bagged them up.

  On the ground floor, we’re checking out the rooms that will not be swept by security, like the lecture hall and the closed collections, and Theo has a revelation.

  So there are a lot more guards here at every access point, right? they say.

  Yeah, I’m worried, I say.

  There are also a lot more people in other official roles who can give access but are not necessarily watching people in the same way. There are docents, and exhibit staff, and whoever just kind of walking around in their little blazers.

  Okay? I say. So, you’re making me very nervous right now.

  My point is human error. There are too many people with too many unclear roles around all the time being asked for directions and with their attention split everywhere. And most importantly, they say, look.

  They point to a group of eager-looking teenagers receiving instructions from someone in a red blazer.

  What am I looking at? I say.

  Interns, they say. New summer interns. Theo holds out their phone. Look, it says the collections interns started this week.

  They don’t know what they’re doing yet or their way around, they’re nervous, and confused, and some of them have keys.

  Sure enough, I look over, and a few of the interns are holding a key out in wonder like they were just told it would open a portal to hell.

  Wow they really should not be giving these kids keys, I say.

  I’m guessing one of those keys opens that door, says Theo, pointing to a room with a sign that says “Learning Collections: Closed for Summer Inventory.”

  That’s your spot, they say.

  You just have to find a way to get a key.

  Theo and I go get lunch and jump in the lake for a few minutes. The water is glittery clear and endless over soft sand bars that recur five and ten and twenty feet out like there’s no end to how many times you can start over. I did not realize how much love I could have for a cold lake. Back in the room, I put on my most inconspicuous tourist outfit. I have been saving a pair of oversized shorts for this moment.

  Wait, I have something for you, says Theo, to complete the look.

  They pull something out of their bag wrapped in tissue paper.

  Ta-da, they say, and roll onto the bed laughing.

  It’s a bucket hat.

  No, I say.

  Come on, they say.

  I will not bury B in a bucket hat.

  You can take it off for the burial, they say, obviously.

  25

  All afternoon I wander around the museum pretending to be absorbed with insects or mummies or whatever, while I keep an eye out for where the interns are. I lose track of them when they go into collections areas off-limits for visitors, but they always seem to re-emerge from the same door a few minutes or an hour later. They eat lunch in the picnic area. They even all use the bathroom at the same time. I keep trying to figure out how in the world I’m going to get a key off of one of them to get into the Learning Collections area that Theo and I picked near the right stairwell.

  It’s getting close to the end of the workday, and people are leaving the museum en masse. I start to get frantic and start running, then realize I’m drawing attention to myself in a loony
bucket hat no less, and I slow down. I sit by the sea mammals downstairs and breathe. I’m preparing myself to give up for the day and walk back to the Travelodge. I make one final pass across the Ground floor toward the movie theater, and do a double-take. There is a little gold key sticking out of the door to the Learning Collections area. It’s just there.

  I look up from the doorknob and see two interns walking toward me quickly with a big worried mood.

  I turn the key in the lock, pull it out, and slip inside in one swift motion. I relock the door from the inside in the darkness.

  Wait what? I hear one of them say. It was right here. Shit, I left it right here. I was just down here. I can’t believe this.

  Their shadows move the light around in the crack under the door.

  Don’t worry, I’ll help you look. It’s here somewhere.

  I knew I was going to be the one to mess something up on the first day.

  This probably happens all the time.

  Do you think they’re going to kick me out of the program?

  No way, no. I mean, probably not.

  Their voices trail off, and I’m alone. My eyes begin to adjust. The room is filled with miniature portable dioramas packaged like gifts ready to be shipped. Behind the back row, there is a good space to curl up and be out of sight should anyone open the door. I take inventory: B is secure in the army backpack. I have my phone but it’s off so it can’t accidentally go off and give me away. I also have a watch with a glow face that used to be B’s. I have a little bit of water, a peanut butter crunch protein bar, and a combo knife with scissors, screwdriver, toothpick, and pliers. It’s already after five, so the museum should be closed and all non-essential staff should be headed home.