“I wish she wouldn’t still think of me as a child.”
“She doesn’t. No, I honestly don’t think so, Anton. She knows you’re responsible enough to be alone. It’s your morale that concerns her. After such a disastrous year. Your parents felt bad about asking you to brave the holidays alone.”
They sat briefly in silence. Uncle Gregor smoked. Anthony gazed out at the windows of the apartment building across the street. A light snow had begun to fall. Anthony could feel flakes of it settle into his hair. The sky was a flat, steely gray with an even cloud cover, utterly unsuitable for sky watching.
“Then why did they?” he asked, surprising himself.
“Oh, I hate this part, my boy, because I’m not supposed to say. But I’m going to anyway. But you didn’t hear this from me, all right? If anybody asks, you’re to say you picked it up on your own.”
“Okay. What?”
“Your parents’ marriage is hanging by a thread.”
“Oh,” Anthony said. He had not picked that up on his own. While he was wondering why he hadn’t, he noticed that his nose had grown painfully cold. “For how long?”
“Well, since your brother died. Not to give you the impression that they don’t care about what happened to you as well. But . . .”
“I get it,” Anthony said, jumping into the pause. “I get why Greg dying was worse than me getting hurt. Anybody with a brain would.”
“And you kept telling them you were fine if they went away. Which I was stunned to hear they’d used as justification. Let’s just say I would’ve made a different decision if you were my son. I don’t want to speak ill of your parents, so I’ll leave it at that. But I came to ask if you’re really fine. It’s a terrible thing to lose your only brother. Even for me, when your grandpa Anton passed, and I was seventy-six. So why did you convince them it was fine to leave you? Did you need the time alone?”
“Not really, no. I would’ve liked it if we’d had Christmas as a family this year. Actually.”
“But you didn’t tell them so.”
“No.”
“Hmm,” Uncle Gregor said. Anthony got the impression that the man was trying to figure him out. But a second or two later he realized it was the telescope’s instruction manual that held the older man’s attention. “I think I see how this mounts. But we need this little gizmo.” He pointed to an illustration of a palm-sized, wheel-like piece of metal in the manual. “You know where to find that?”
“I saw it. I put it in the zippered pocket of the carrying case so it wouldn’t get lost.”
“Wise. You are a wise young man. Except . . . ,” he added as he took the wheel-shaped piece from Anthony, “. . . and don’t take this wrong. Don’t feel like I’m insulting you, please, because I know people three and four times your age who are no better at this than you are. You’re not expected to have life down to a science at age eighteen. But I’m going to say this anyway, if only to give you something you can aspire to. A human life is a very different place when you can tell people what you need. I’ll just say that and no more.”
“I hear you,” Anthony said.
“So what do you expect to see through snow clouds, and with all these city lights washing out the stars?”
“I don’t know, really. But I still have to try. At least I have to try to look at a plane or a far-off building. To see how powerful it is. I’m really anxious to see how powerful it is.”
“You should let me drive you out into the country with it. Sometime.”
“I’d love that. When?”
“It’ll have to be after the holidays. Your great-aunt will shoot me if I make one more plan.”
It was a surprising letdown—just reaching out for something and then having it pulled back, even for only a medium space of time. But he didn’t let on. He didn’t say what he needed.
Changing one’s whole modus operandi of communication wasn’t as easy as just hearing a piece of advice and then starting over.
Before he walked out and left him alone again, Uncle Gregor surprised Anthony with an enthusiastic embrace. He held on tightly and kissed Anthony on the side of the temple, his lips holding firm for a second or two.
“Your family loves you,” he said into Anthony’s ear. “And I don’t just mean your parents. I mean all of us. The whole extended family. We’re very proud of the way you turned out. Nobody is blind to the difficulty of your adjustment or your losses. There’s support here if you want it.” Then he stepped back, and seemed to pull himself together. To draw inward again. “Now, I need to get home to my wife.”
“Thank you,” Anthony said.
He was not accustomed to crying in front of others, and he could not have said more without crying. More accurately, he was not accustomed to crying, period. He had not indulged that release because of a deep fear that, having allowed the tears to start, he would never find the end of them, or would find they had no end at all.
Chapter Two
Third Window from the Left
Anthony woke after nine o’clock in the evening. Of course, it was already dark. He fairly leapt out of bed, as if a dark night sky were a precious and dwindling commodity, fleeing as he dressed.
It was not easy to get dressed.
Pants are best grasped by the waistband on both sides, and pulled into place. To pull them up on the left, then shift your left hand around to the right, was to invite them to fall down around your knees again. He had learned to hold them in place by reaching around with his right wrist and pressing them against his hip, but in his hurry that night he made several mistakes.
The T-shirt was easy enough, but then came the flannel outer shirt. Of course, it had buttons. There was an art to doing up buttons one-handed. Especially left-handed. Anthony was only about halfway to mastering that art.
He slipped into his loafers—all his shoes with laces had been discarded and replaced—but he only stamped and folded the heels of the shoes down under his own heels, and he had to sit on the bed and sort both shoes out with his left hand.
He shrugged into his coat and stepped out onto the balcony.
The telescope was covered with its nylon case, just the way he and his great-uncle had left it—to protect it from the moisture of the snow.
He pulled the cover off.
Then he looked out over the city landscape and chose a target to view. Stars were out of the question—there might as well have been none in existence anywhere in the universe. But in the far distance he saw a building with a high point, topped with what might have been a lightning rod, or some kind of communications antenna. Whatever it was, it was currently wrapped in a spiral of red and green Christmas lights.
He would point the telescope at those lights, and learn how to focus on them. Learn how close a night view his new gift could offer him.
He carefully undid the knob that allowed the telescope to sweep horizontally on its tripod. He centered it on the building and tightened the knob again.
Then he loosened the knob that would allow him to raise the angle of the scope. But he loosened it too much, too fast, and without any thought for the weight of the scope and the effect gravity would have on it. He had no counterweight for the back of the scope. Not yet, anyway. He felt it going. Not off the mount—it couldn’t literally fall to or off the balcony floor. But the front end was falling, or appeared to be falling. It filled him with an instinctual alarm.