***
Tiny hands push at my shoulder and I know it is not part of my dream. I open my eyes to find my daughter holding tightly to her Pooh-Pooh bear as if it was connected to her chest.
“Mama, Daddy fell up and now he’s stuck on that floor.” Her expression is blank, her big, clear, grey eyes devoid of tears or worry. She was just stating a fact as she saw it from her six-year-old point of view.
“The building was calling to him and he went and now he’s stuck. He wants you to come to him.” And then she turns and returns to her room as if everything she just said was the most normal thing in the world. I am too sleepy to ask if she had had a nightmare or investigate if this was another sleepwalking episode. I lie in my king size bed with my husband’s side cold from his absence, and listen to my daughter’s tiny footsteps as she wobbles down the hallway back to her Barbie decorated room. I listen as she climbs into bed, the mattress squeaking under her weight . . . she is big for her age.
I roll over and stare at the empty space beside me, my eyes misting at the sight of its emptiness. It didn’t always use to be this way. Before my daughter was born, I would spend most of my free time wrapped in my husband’s arms, wide awake in bliss. That is all gone now.
Her birth took all that away.
My child came into world hating me. She never smiled or laughed or even tried reciprocating affection.
Only to her father they were returned.
Around me, she is an unhappy child. Only in her father’s presence does she show her baby teeth and the shaking of her belly from joyous laughter. I try to be a good mother and friend, but still she is standoffish to me - to her own mother. She and her father have their own language. Even without words they are always talking. Along with her picture books, he is her only friend that brings her joy. And when he is away on business, she stays cooped up in her room, reading, drawing, playing with her favorite doll or simply staring out her window watching children her own age play in the neighborhood park. Many times, I have urged her to go outside and join her age group, even dragging her sometimes which sends my artistic child screaming and crying.
The screams stop when I allow her to get her way. She wipes the tears away, looks up at me and grabs a book. That is the only time I see emotion in her face. It says, You gave birth to me, nothing more.
I reply back to that silent emotion with a hug which she allows and look into her grey eyes which aren’t mine but her father’s. The only thing she has of mine is my stubborn hair. My wooly hair is maintained by the skillful hands of my beautician while my daughter’s is maintained by me. While I oil, comb and plat her hair into two ponytails, it is the only time she withstands my close presence. She may not care for me but I make sure she is a presentable chubby child.
He fell up.
My daughter woke me up again, and told me that Dan was stuck. This time she added that he fell from the first to the twenty-third floor.
“Baby, you are having another bad dream. Let’s get you back to bed,” I say, this time getting out of bed and walking her down the hall to her room. She allows me to tuck her into bed and gently leave a soft kiss to her forehead.
At the door, surrounded by the dim glow of her night light, she looks up at me and whispers, “2303.”
“2303?”
She doesn’t answer instead closes her eyes indicating she is finished with this rare moment.
The next day my life crumbles into sand grain pieces.
The police reported that my husband had been seen standing before Felipe Hotel looking up at its tall glass panels. Built more than ninety years ago, The Felipe is the most prestigious structure in the area. Daniel had been there wearing his tan docker pants and pale blue company cotton shirt with his hands shoved into his pockets looking up. In the report, the security guard stated that an unidentified Caucasian male stood at the entrance looking up at the building confused and disheveled. The guard asked if he could assist my husband but before he could reply, the guard, hearing commotion behind him, took his attention away for a brief moment, and when he turned back to Dan, he saw that Dan had fled from his sight.
A maid discovered my husband on the twenty-third suite balcony – dead from what the coroner’s report indicated as “multiple injuries due to a fall from height.” How can this be? He was found on the very top floor.
Sam had said that he fell up.
I picture my husband with shattered bones and organs turned to mush while falling towards the sky.
I open my cell and view my call list. 9:23 p.m. His death had occurred around 11:00 p.m. If I had known it would be the last time I would speak to my husband, I would have said more.
“Barb, I’ll be home tomorrow,” he had promised. I smiled into the phone, glad he would be home one day early. “I miss you,” I had confessed and his reply had been the same. “How’s Sam?” “She misses you,” I replied. “I miss her too. I love you both. See you tomorrow.” That would be his last words to me. It was a one minute conversation. His normal conversation, you almost could lip synch to it. He didn’t waste words instead using action to convey his meaning. That’s what had drawn me to him in the first place. He held a powerful presence that you couldn’t quite ignore. Once his grey eyes locked on my light browns, my will bent to his. Married four months after meeting, we had Samantha nine months later.
I buried him in San Antonio where most of his family lived. I hadn’t wanted it that way, however, it was a request I promised Dan I would fulfill. To be laid beside his mother and brother, both had died two years earlier. Neither of us had cried at their funeral because they had done some despicable things to Dan.
Incest.
“Make sure you bury me next to them because when resurrection comes, I want to be there to kick they ass right back to dust.”
That was Dan for you, he was very straightforward with his thoughts.
Now it’s two weeks later after he fell up.
Samantha had stated it as fact – she said it as if it had been a specific object or color of pencil. For her, there was no obscurity. There was no maybe’s in her world. The sky wasn’t just blue, it is a specific blue: cerulean, ball blue, baby blue, teal, light blue – never simply blue.
Therefore if she said Dan fell up, he fell up. And to ease her mind, we will set out to visit the place he took his last breath.