the view

I. my father rode a hot air balloon
they woke up early, my father in his burgandy flannel robe, shifting around the house in slippers too small for his feet, and my brother, tiny eyed and hollow. they had to drive out to where the balloon took off, my mother and i were staying at home. it was so early that it was dark outside. no one spoke as my mom fried eggs and cooked grits, the standard breakfast before a long day, but i needed to know more. how high would they go? was the balloon attached to the earth with a rope? or it just floated? how would they get back down?
i used to ask my mother where the sky ended and heaven began. she thought it was a great question but now it seems so obvious to me, so typical of a child. the answer is so easy. you cant get there by plane, or rocketship. if i had been told, then, that heaven wasnt a place. if i had been told then.
they had to drive the buick with its plush seats to montgomery, to a field somewhere in montgomery. there would be a hot air balloon waiting for them, and they would sit in a bucket that hung from it, and someone would steer it like a car or a boat.
how does it get up there? what if it pops?
hot air rises. it wont.
my mother went back to bed and i climbed in with her, next to her perfumed powdered warmth, next to her threadbare gown that i would put on decades later. i would put it on, alone, in front of my full length mirror, and look at the way my breasts hung, look at my nipples through the pale flowered cotton.

II. he tried to keep him awake with questions
our across the street neighbor, who lived with another man in a big faded brick house with the driveway so steep it scabbed the bumper of their car every time they pulled in, fell off of a ladder one saturday afternoon as he was painting their flowerboxes. my mother and i weren't at home. maybe we were at the western on highlands with her grocery list written in half upper case and half lower case letters. maybe we were shopping at stein-mart, buying clothes with red slashes through the brand name on the tag.
when we got home the buick was gone and my father didnt come home for hours. when he did there was blood on his t-shirt, the one that says "est es besser en den bahamas," the one that we bleached and that i still have. the one that i put my face in after he died, and inhaled, and said, just dont forget what it smells like. you owe him that much. like the musty inside of his dresser drawers, like weekends and old cars. the one that, even after being washed, even after accumulating whatever smell it is that i have, still smells exactly as it did.
he sat on the wicker stool in our kitchen and told us that "jim," the neighbor, fell off the ladder, and came across the street and rang the bell. not to either of his next door neighbors, my father said specifically. but across the street. and by the time he had answered the door jim was unconscious on the veiny marble floor of our front porch.
i shook him, he came to. i asked him the basics, whats your name, what year is it, where do you live. there was blood coming from his head but i didnt know exactly where, so i put him in the car and we drove to st.vincents.
is he ok? my mother asked.
i think so. mike, you know the man who lives with him, came to the hospital when i finally got ahold of him. jim remembered his car phone number, but he didnt even know who the president was.
my dad shook his head and gave a little laugh, as if he had known jim for years, as if that was so typical of jim.
his tone of voice was the same as when my mother and i were in savanah on a girl scout trip and our cat, who had been missing for 9 days, came back. if i hadn't been there, my father would say. and my mother and i would look at each other and bite the inside corner of our lips because we both knew, the cat would have waited.

III. in wedding pictures everyone looks perfect
my brother and i are sitting in my car with the windows rolled down, in the driveway of his new house in san francisco. my headlights are pointed straight at the garage door, and it is the week before his wedding. he says he is tired of talking about it, but he never wants to talk about the wedding, so i am telling him about my boyfriend, who i am afraid i am going to be with for the rest of my life. i am twenty years old, and i cant imagine ever being with anyone else, so i assume that means he is it. forever.
what if i only have sex with one person? what if i dont go on another date?
the only thing i know for sure, he says to me without turning his head from the blanked out garage door, is that you will have many romances.
really? but what about him? i dont want to lose him.
he shrugs. you dont have to lose him, but there will be so many hims.
you know what i found the other day when we were unpacking? he says.
what?
a video from the day that me and dad went on that hot air balloon ride. i was like, fifteen and i thought it was such a dumb idea. but this video...you have to see it.
we tiptoe upstairs to not wake diane, who does yoga every day and goes to bed early, and sit on the floor in front of his tv. the video is already in the VCR, and when he presses play the screen is instantly full of green. the only noise is the wind, but the volume is turned up as loud as it can go.
will it wake her, i say.
he shrugs again. the noise is the best part. listen.
we sit and watch the lush sparkling treetops, some of them turning orange with the coming autumn, the birds flying below, what seems like the whole of alabama spread spectacularly in front of them. and the wind. we watch for at least half an hour, we watch our father turn the camera on his son, who gives two sarcastic thumbs up.
this is my favorite part, he whispers.
and as the camera is sweeping over the landscape, over the endless reaching infinite view, our fathers voice, though its a whisper, pierces the wind: man. man oh man.
my brother is crying. i had totally forgotten thats what he used to say. how could i have forgotten.
and we watch the rest of it, the trees and the wind, on the floor of his new house a week before his wedding.