Alexandra was lovely against the horizon at the Rockaways with Han. They bought ice cream and corn dogs, dough still hot and trailing sugar the whole way to the ocean. Han used the stick to draw Elmos in the sand. One, two, over and over, until finally as far as they could see it was face after face of smiles made by his hand.
There had been Elmo in China. It was something he recognized. It was a word they shared, the smiling monster.
Elmo, he said, and they knew he meant he was happy or wanted. That, at least, they were people he wanted on the other end of a conversation.
They pointed to the sky. This is bird. This is cloud. This is rain. His boy loved weather. It was nearly a hobby. At home, every picture book, his finger moved to the sky. Jeremy would sponge nimbuses into the blue walls of his bedroom so that Han would know his father wanted to give him more than the world.
They ran back to the car, and he was laughing. They were.
And that’s what Jeremy thought of the rest of his life: redeemed weather. The flight and soar. There were droplets clung to the ends of the boy’s black hair as he was fastened.
Han turned his face from the window in the car, said, “Baba.” And he was pointing. He was pointing at Jeremy, and they were an impossibly beautiful thing, the three, a family.