Here's this cute little story about a cute little inflatable rubber balloon child I started writing, that I don't know how to finish:
She lands in Mom's outstretched hands and they form a cup around her, almost like a hug, and Lux can understand that, she must seem so tiny and soft and helpless to them in this, her weakest moment, of course they want to protect her. Dad joins Mom and they look down on her, friendly giants trying not to let her see how relieved they are, the sweethearts.
Now Dad picks her up and wets his lips and blows new breath into the hole in her tail fin. Her rubber skin tightens and the space between her eyes grow, shrinking the world, and her painted on mouth with its many sharp teeth straightens so she can speak.
'Did you have a good time?' asks Mom, now eye to eye with her.
'Oh yes, Mom', says Lux. 'I dug a hole in the dirt, well I started on one, it'll take days to get anywhere.' She shows Mom her dirty pectoral fins and makes a face that says these are no good for digging and Mom takes the rubber flippers in her hands with a knowing smile. Dad closes her up with a plastic clip and slips the buoy over her waist with a little double-pat on her back that says good to go and Lux starts floating through the air towards the house, wiggling to stay in the air. A gentle buff from Mom gets her flying over their heads and she coasts for a few seconds until she comes down to about shoulder height and starts wiggling again. Dad bumps her even higher and she floats happily, thinking how other kids just get their parents lifting them by their arms but she gets to really fly. A little.
Back in the house, Mom helps Lux wash, taking special care of the dirt on her fins. She scrubs them ever so gently with a soft sponge and inspects them closely, finding many tiny scrapes, bright against her black skin. 'No more digging before these heal', says Mom. 'We don't want you springing a leak, do we?'
'No, Mom' says Lux, rubbing her face against Mom's chest. Mom pulls her close in a hug that squeezes air into her face and tail and that's all right.
'You don't think I worry too much about you', asks Mom.
'No', says Lux, after some thought. 'I like that you look after me. I mean, of course I need it, but I like it anyway. Um, it's been almost an hour.' Lux begins to feel stale and used and when Mom opens her to let out the air she feels relieved not just from the tension of her rubber skin relaxing. She closes her large cartoon eyes so she can't see the world grow around her, and then shrink as Mom blows her up again. She shakes off the few water drops still clinging to her and flips lazily along the floor into her room.
And then Mom and Dad eat lunch while Lux draws. As always, she makes pictures of the world on the other side, trying to show it to Mom and Dad who can't go there. The digital pencils fits awkwardly in her flippers, but she's better than she was a year ago. Slowly, methodically, she draws a landscape on the screen with abstract lines on the dark brown ground, and reddish blobs signifying twisted trees under a burning orange sky, and dark squiggly lines crossing over it. With a frustrated grunt she drops the stylus and rolls around on the linoleum floor. If she could draw, maybe she could understand anything of what she sees over there, there's so little that makes sense, especially the way the ground curves.
'Will I ever get a brother or sister?' says Lux, flopping onto the table between her parents with a light bop. Her eager toothy smile meets with uncertainty, fluster and even a little fear.
'Well honey, it's, it's hard to say', says Dad. 'Lots of complicated aspects to that question, some that would be very hard for me and Mom to explain.'
'The short answer is we don't know', says Mom, putting a comforting hand on Lux' nose. 'The real question, honey, I think is do you want a little sister or brother?'
'Yeah', says Lux, trying to bury her face in the table to get away from the embarrassment. 'If there was someone like me it'd be more fun. I don't know.' Hidden from her view, the parents quickly exchange several frantic looks and find agreement.
'Let's sleep on it', says Dad, and they both kiss Mom goodnight. And as Mom walks upstairs to the bedroom Dad says, 'Well, now it's just you and me until evening. What do you want to do?'
'I want to draw', says Lux. 'But it's too hard.' She bounces to her room, restlessly, and Dad follows. He insists that her pictures are very pretty, and she tries to explain that you can't see what they're supposed to show.
'Tell me what this is', says Dad, flat on his stomach with his nose almost touching the screen, pointing at one of the tree blobs, so Lux tells him about the red trees, their fluffy round leaves and their branches that reach for her as she passes and that one time they held her and tickled her until she wiggled free. Dad then grabs her dorsal fin and rolls over on his back and hugs her close and she feels a shiver running through his body and figures she should have left that part out.
'Are there other things there that move?' says Dad after a while, when he dares let her go. 'You haven't mentioned anything like that before.'
'Hmm, the clouds move', says Lux. 'But nothing else. That I have seen.' And as she goes on about the trees, Dad takes her fin in his hand and guides her stylus, slowly, making light dreamlike lines and she watches amazed as an old, twisted birch with branches full of secrets and sadness grows on the screen before her.
And when it's done and Dad has changed her air he pats her drawing fin and tells her that she's learning, that she's soaking up skills and knowledge every minute of every day and getting bigger, and that one day she will be able to do anything she wants, and Lux bounces up and butts her head to his and he laughs and throws her to the ceiling where she bounces loud enough to worry about Mom waking up and he catches her and hugs her and that's all right.
And after drawing and deleting a few more disappointingly sticky trees Lux decides she needs another look at the source. Mounting an expedition through the gate goes easily: First Dad helps her put on the navigational buoy, then he puts on a hat, and they go out the door. The buoy is an old friend, a rubber ring, inflatable like herself, transparent and covered with aerodynamic soft plastic fins; it weighs her down a little, but makes it easier to turn and to keep in one direction in the air. Outside, Lux likes to fly.
On the far end of the wild-grown grass field hangs the blue swirly thing in the air, with a pair of lawn chairs parked below, where the grass has turned a dark and bloody shade of red. As they get closer, Lux bobs wildly in excitement. Dad gives her fresh air again, and a kiss, and tells her to have fun, and that's all he can do. She disappears into the dancing light and Dad slumps down on a chair, checking his watch. He thinks about reading a book, or looking at that little crack in the hallway wall, or watching his wife sleep, but he knows he won't be able to focus until his girl comes home. The sun is nice and warm and he pretends to doze off for a while but he keeps counting seconds. Of course, they wanted an adventurous child, curious and unafraid. So he waits and he can almost see the shadows moving, counting the seconds.
As always she comes back after just over an hour, sagging down on the grass as if she was exhausted, rubbing and squirming to open her air hole and let out her insides in a long wheezing exhale. Small and spent, she enjoys being cradled in Dad's huge hands for a moment, until he inflates her again.
'Did you see anything fun', asks Dad, with a hint of longing in the corner of his eye.
'I went straight up', says Lux. 'I wanted to see how far I could see. So I saw a whole lot. But it was all pretty boring from so far away.' She falls silent, thinking about how to turn the pictures in her mind onto the paper. Silently, she bobs beside Dad while he takes a lap through the vegetable garden, picking out weeds, talking to the lettuce, watering the paprika. Lux butts her nose against a nearby sunflower and wonders what it smells like. She knows all about smells, except what they feel like. 'There's no wind over there I think', she says, suddenly. 'There's always some wind here if you go high enough, but I never felt anything there.'
'Maybe you didn't go high enough', Dad suggests. 'The world there could be much bigger, for instance.'
'Yeah', says Lux. 'Maybe I could bring a helium balloon and watch how it flies, it'll go up faster than me and it won't have to turn back when it's half out of air.'
'Hey, that's a really good idea', says Dad, standing up and stretching his back. 'My brain must be crusty, I don't know that I ever try to think of things that we can bring through to there anymore.'
'Yeah, you should leave thinking to the younger generation' says Lux, tumbling over to poke him in the ribs with her tail. Her cheeks turn a bright pastel pink as Dad's praise sinks in and she giggles as he lands an uppercut in her belly that launches her several feet into the air in a burst of speed.
'Come down here missy', says Dad, shaking his fist. 'Children should not let their parents know they're smarter than them!' He laughs heartily and she joins him. Without warning Lux finds herself paddling hard to circle the roof while Dad chases her from the ground with big, lumbering steps and feebly grasping hands.
And in the evening Mom wakes up and Dad goes to sleep, as always, and for one breath Lux lies in bed with them and listens to Mom's story and it's almost like a regular bedtime for a regular girl. Except when the story ends Dad is the only one sleeping, and Lux heads down with Mom to look at the sunset. They sit on the grass, Mom with a mug of coffee in her hand, and watch as fire soaks through the clouds and the sky grows dark.
'Why is it always so pretty?' asks Lux. What she wants to know is how sunsets work and how she could draw one that would make Mom happy, but she's not sure if Mom could answer that.
'Why is there pretty things?' says Mom, musing. 'There's beauty everywhere, love. Or maybe we are made to see beauty in all things. Look at this grass.' She picks a blade of grass and holds it close to her face, and Lux leans on her shoulder to see, and she sees a great many things. The edge curves beautifully; the the web of nerves trace a beautiful pattern on the surface; the color of the grass is a deep, beautiful green against the last light of the sun. 'There's beauty', says Mom, 'to make it easier for us to care about the world, to make it more important to us, more meaningful.'
'You explain things so different from Dad', says Lux and leans a little closer.
'Maybe things just look different in the night', says Mom, putting an arm around Lux' back and squeezing, tenderly. At these words something shifts in Lux' mind.
'Maybe it looks different to you since you just woke up', says Lux, hesistant, thoughtful. 'And if Daddy is up to see the sunset when he's really sleepy. . .'
'Yes, we may see very different things' says Mom, eyes twinkling with a mysterious smile. 'So who do you think is right?'
'Oh, I don't think you or Dad is wrong', says Lux. 'I like your explanations and his explanations. It can be both ways, can't it?'
'Of course it can', says Mom.
And the night passes, as all the nights with Mom, as far back as Lux can remember. Mom speaks in questions and riddles and lets Lux figure the answers out herself, and beams with pride and joy when she does, even though Lux thinks there's always something more than Mom lets her know, some deeper truth that would make Mom so happy if she could uncover it, and so she thinks very hard.
But the night is not all work. Behind the house, deep in the forest lies a little pond where mother and daughter goes for a midnight soak. Lux can't get under the water by herself, but Mom dives and pulls her down by the tail and when she looks up at the surface, glittering with minute reflected moonlight, with the water pushing her silently from every direction, Lux feels a thrill of danger and shivers, forgetting for a second about Mom. But then Mom lets go and Lux pops up out of the water like a cork and splashes and laughs.
When morning comes Lux can't remember how many times she has laughed.
And then Dad wakes up and it starts all over again.
It would be a shame to waste this setup I think, but I just can't figure out what happens next. Maybe it would work as a TV pilot, but I'd like there to be some resolution. Anyone have any thoughts?