And Yumi and Ellie and Nels’ family who swallow chandelier light and all the beautiful things that glow so damn warm and bright are trying desperately to fight off the deepening black.
Quirks
We all have little quirks that make our edges well defined.
Take Ryan for instance. He refuses to twirl his noodles around his fork. Just stabs the metal straight into the bowl and scoops out waterfalls of pasta. Has noodle-beards accenting his grinning cheeks.
Donnie has a soft spot for kittens. Cats are just fine, thank you, but kittens, kittens with their cotton ball fur and eyes that are steely blue and their mews that are tiny and sound like water drips – kittens with their miniature paws and bodies that curl, curl into a cinnamon roll on your chest and purr with lungs that are motors. A kitten comes by and the leather fades from Donnie’s chin and a warmth comes to his cheeks.
Riley can’t get enough of cottage cheese and pears. Together. Just the thought of it makes my esophagus constrict, but he insists that it is a wonderful concoction and I’m just being unreasonably squeamish about such things. But I can’t get over it. The squeak, squeak of the cottage cheese on teeth is enough to make my nose wrinkle. He grabs mouthfuls of it and always eats it with a spoon. Has to be a spoon, apparently.
Nels, who is hobbling around Ryan’s house on crutches, is a smeller. He smells food before eating it. He smells clothes before putting them on. He smells the morning as he steps out his door. He smells the evening as the sun oozes orange-cream in the sky. He even smells the hair on his sister’s head whenever she gives him a hug, which has been much more often since the accident. She knows precisely how many inches away she was to losing her brother.
Mine is easy. I always flick the light switch on, off, and on again when I come into a room. I don’t know why, but it’s there. It always makes me smile for some reason because I only ever notice it after. Eleanor gives me hell for it sometimes. Tells me it’s bad for the bulbs. I am confusing them or overworking them or teasing them. I grin and tell her that she’s bat-shit crazy, but I love her all the same for the concern about something so inconsequential as a light bulb. And then she puffs her bangs away from her face and throws couch pillows that are green and glossy at my face and we are hyenas in the yellow light of the living room.
I think about all these things tonight because I need to get outside my head. Because I can see Ian in the back of my mind. Ian who always folds up his potato chip bags into neat squares before he throws them away. Ian who grabs fistfuls of slippery grass and yowls deep and painful when life is too furious and disorienting.
Ryan slurps his noodles, Riley squeaks another bite of cottage cheese, Donnie grins gently and dreams of kittens, and Nels sniffs the air with his eyes closed and could tell you that it’s Friday night even without looking at a calendar.
Me? I am looking for a light switch, fumbling along the hallway of my mind with palm spread ocean-large.
I am looking for the rooms with the gorgeous and sad oil paintings.
Glossy Finish
A lone man who I don’t know stands at the front of a church I have never been to and squeezes the flannelled pouch of a set of bagpipes – an instrument I’ve never heard except on the radio and movies.
There is a casket behind him that is closed. It is black and has a matte finish, which seems only fitting. Who would want to be buried in something that was sleek and shiny?
A photograph of Oliver Hastings sits atop the casket. His hair is thinning on the top of his head, and he looks off to the left as if the future is there. His face is a cloud and his face is smiling like April and his face is embossed in my brain.
I saw this man only a week ago. I shook his right hand and felt his left palm lay like a blanket on my shoulder. He told me then how proud he was of Ian, of me, of the men we were turning into. And the more I think about it, the more I want to sneak off to the bathroom and deposit my breakfast into the toilet. Because the truth of the matter is that he may have been proud, but was shaking violent inside when he told these cavernous words to me.
Ian sits in front of me, his back all tangent-line-straight. His face is set and all the moisture has been drained out of his eyes.
He will not weep for his father today. Not once. He is done with that.
Today he will be strong for his mother. His family.
All the rage that he felt the day of, the day after, two days after, it is only a ghost in his bones now. The residual shakes I saw that morning, they left in an exponential decay from his body. The toxicity of the event is palatable now. No radiation from the fallout will melt his bones to liquid.
There are many people who knew Oliver. Many who stand up at the front and labor their shaky voices through speeches about the man. How they remember his kindness and optimism. How they remember seeing him working in his fields with the sun baking his back. His hands that were always stained brown and smelled like life. Lovely little stories that tie everything up in high gloss sheen. Polite stories that paint everything in warm hues and they will make people grin and sleep easier tonight.
But Ian will have none of that.
He stands up and his mother sucks in air and holds it close to her heart as her son, who is tall and straight and has hair that looks just like uncle Earl’s, her son who has dreams of Seattle and sees the rusted moon in his dreams, goes to the front of the church and speaks without a microphone. His voice is large and calm like buttery summer days.
“I loved my father. What son in his right mind wouldn’t? I’ve…I’ve heard some wonderful stories today. Stories that remind me just what I’ve lost this week. I…just wanted to say thank you. Thank you for coming here and loving this man as much as I do. You all are lending a lot of strength to my mom and me by being here. So…thanks again.”
He sits down and keeps his body straight.
And maybe it’s all in my head. Maybe I’m the one who wants to look at the matte-finish and ignore the rosy bits of life. Maybe I’ve had it wrong all this time and I’ve been too mired down to see it.
Ian’s mother leans over to him and whispers into his right ear, “Thank you. Thank you for not saying what I would have.”
I understand then. I understand how Chief O’Shaye could love and loathe his son at the same time. How the duality of life and the complexities of the heart are thrumming violent and wild. How the rawness of everyday is too close and too unsightly sometimes, and we must pull back and put a polished shine on things so that the sun can glint off of it and make us lose our breath and whisper awed noises to ourselves.
Brilliant little flashes of deception.
Aunt Patty’s Tulips
They are a fireworks explosion ensconced in a glass vase. They are spongy and colored vibrant like cheek rouges and lipstick and peaches that are in season and syrupy-ripe and sticky-sweet. They look like you could bite into a petal and taste the wax of crayons.
They stand solitary in the middle of a reception table that has been clothed with what looks like an overlarge doily.
My plate is there. Buttery crackers that dissolve in your mouth and meats that are tissue-paper thin and touch the tongue with a sugar-salt kiss.
Our hands are around the table as well. Mine are small and know their way around the neck of a guitar. There is a ruby scratch on my knuckle from Ryan’s cat.
I have to think on the little things.
The ray of sun that slices like an exhaled breath from God through the atmosphere that is speckled with dust that looks like galaxy snow. As if the universe has been condensed down to a tiny fireside room in a church that has floorboards that moan at our feet.
The candles that burn and bubble wax down their sides like frozen rivers.
Ryan’s face that is dry and stares at nothing except food.
Aunt Patty’s tulips that explode like a late summer sunset.
Yes. I have to think on the little things.
For now.
Have You Forgotten??
?
Who this story is really about?
I keep asking myself that question as I sift through the footage that spills and spills out of the video camera. The faces that are nervous and look off at familiar objects as they recount the events in life that they wish they could forget. Their cheeks that crease with lines like folded paper.
But I remember. I can never forget.
Ellie on the dark asphalt with pebbles digging into her shins, and she’s shaking, oh God, she’s shaking so hard. The night air that frosted and felt like needles on the tongue.
Scotty being pulled up on the shore and the sickening slosh and the pop, pop, pop of the rocks as he was drug up.
And all the rest is just me trying to get my bearings. Do you understand? I am just a boy, just a kid who is dizzy from being spun around and has been set down in a town that is tiny and intricate and beautiful and so damn connected that it burns every single time skin splits and bleeds. I’m stumbling around with the world going clockwise right before my eyes and all I’m trying to do is find something solid for my fingers. Do you get me?
Ellie, I can see you on the porch. It is calm outside and sunny. Your feet are bare in December and the air cannot touch your skin. You are too tough and too smart and too much like a blossoming dogwood tree to let it.
And here I am in the house, sifting through people’s memories and images that they wish would just leave them the hell alone. I’m putting both my hands on sturdy rails and am trying to steady myself long enough so that when the world has stopped its spiraly-spin, I will be able to walk without tripping over my own two feet.
But in the meantime Eleanor, please stay there. Warm your skin in the sun that might blink away in a few minutes. Wave hello to the vine maples that hang low for you. Just for you.
Please.
Pendulum
I want you to feel this. Again.
I am walking home down Goodwin road at eleven o’clock on a Sunday night. I love country roads because they never waver like the roads in a city. They are boxes and grids and so very predictable. It is sticky-tar-dark and the Christmas Eve air is sluggish. It hasn’t snowed this year, just forty degree weather and rain that soaks clothes and makes bones clack together. But tonight. Tonight it is clear and the frost is beginning to settle because the blanket of clouds has been peeled back. I breathe and it is billowed and curls tightly and mutes a patch of stars.
I stand with my hands in my pockets. The air is alive and electric and all around. The roads are beginning to slick over and all molecules are slowing, slowing, taking long breaths.
And for a few seconds it is perfect.
A wild and careening truck that is rusted out and smells like a dirty gym sock on the inside. It’s headlights are open wide and it has a hungry grill. Metal and rubber and pistons pumping mad and fiery explosions under the hood.
Bobby O’Shaye slides sideways past me. His hat flannelled and his face stretched tight. Whites of his eyes large as the moon. He is frozen and terrified and praying loudly through clenched teeth as his truck skates wild.
The right two wheels of his truck slip into the ditch that is wide and floods easily in April. The blue truck gives out then. Somersaults and flies as if flicked by a giant index finger and folds itself neatly around the truck of a massive fir tree. Neatly like the way my dad folds his ties every Easter and puts on facades for people he doesn’t really care about.
And I stand there, shocked, mouth pried open and hanging low.
In front of me.
Right in front of me.
It happened right in front of me.
He is screaming, and Francis Keeler tears open her door, puts both hands over her mouth, and steadies herself with her shoulder on the doorframe. Because she knows that truck. She knows that boy. She was at the doula who stood diligently by Sara O’Shaye’s side for ten hours of labor. She held a baby who was three weeks early and slathered with vernix. Saw his eyes open for the first time and wondered at the way they shined like tiny marbles. And to see the truck that is folded over like that and to hear me yelling across the ditch to her to call the police and to make sure that Chief O’Shaye comes and hurry, hurry Mrs. Keeler please.
The truck is upside down with the driver’s side door hugging the pulpy bark. Engine that smokes and smokes. There are sounds like water hissing and clicks and repetitive pings and the steam that rises all angry into the darkness. The engine sighs and says over and over that it is done. Finished.
My feet make their way over the grass that is shining silver like my mother’s hair in the pale wash of the moon. I get to the passenger door and, without knowing why, stoop down and look into the window, into the cab that has been squashed down to half its normal size.
There is Bobby O’Shaye. Looking at me. He is hunched with his shoulders pressing down against the metal of the truck’s ceiling, and his eyes are watery. His bones are snapped, too many to count, and later I will find out that his lungs are filling up with liquid.
He cannot speak. His voice is gone and his eyes are watery and move slow, but I believe he can see me. I believe he knows that it is me. That mine will be the last face that he sees. Ever. That his insides are shattered and shutting down on him. He knows all these things as he looks at my face that is frozen-shock and haunting in the moonlight.
He is crying.
Giant tears that could flood Riddleridge Creek. Tears that shine so damn bright in the crystalline night. Tears that, despite all this boy has done to my sister, to me, grab at my ribs.
They are silent tears, because his lungs are only giving him short breaths. Hiccoughs really. He has only seconds left, and he knows it. I know it. When the police get here, when Chief O’Shaye pulls up his car and drops down to his knees and the marshy soil saturates and soaks his knees through his government-issued pants, Bobby will be gone and staring with tears falling the wrong way up his face.
And all the alcohol, all the cigarettes and chewing tobacco and coffee-stained smiles and sweaty skin and the hands that touched my sister and never cared when she fought back, all of it is softening before me.
And I hate it.
I am feeling pity for this boy who is dying before me, and it is burning a hole in my stomach.
No, Bobby.
I will not cry.
Not for you.
No. Goddamnit, no.
But even as I say this, I can see the vernix-baby and the first steps and the face that smiled and smiled when it learned how to ride a bike and all of the small and gorgeous things that are inconsequential but so very weighty.
He is a monster. But my chest constricts and the chokes come and seize my lungs and catch my breath and I exhale in short rasps and cry hot and angry in the middle of the marshy grass. I am ripping up blades and throwing them at the tree trunk and sobbing through my throat and yelling at Bobby. Because I hate him and pity him and wish to hell that it had been different for him. That I am sorry Bobby, so damn sorry that I ever wished you would die. That I didn’t mean for this to happen.
And Bobby looks and can barely see me anymore. He is still and his body is losing its color and heat.
Do you hear me Bobby? Because here is your eulogy right now. Right now as I’m shoving my fist into the pasty ground. You were broken. Fractured and sliced into a million jagged pieces. You may have been a darling baby with eyes that were perfect and shiny, but something broke inside of you later in life. And I want to hate you for that. I want to put all that is wrong with me and heap it elephant-large and ponderous directly on your chest that is now crushed to pulp.
But I can’t do that.
You have done wrong to my family. I look at Ellie every day and hear her cry soft in the night and I know that you took something priceless from her. I want to hate you for that and want your bones to grind to powder for that.
But Ellie would shake her head at me for saying such things.
Bobby, can you see? I can’t hate you. You are fragile and broken
and damn you and your eyes and your tears.
So I sit there. I am a pendulum swinging wide to extremities. Marshy moisture soaking up through my jeans and grabbing at grass and kicking a blue rusted truck, beating my fists on the solid trunk of a fir tree. Because I wanted Bobby to hurt like I did. Like Ellie did. I didn’t want him to die. Just to hurt. Understand?
The night explodes into blue and red swirls and the radios crackle sharp. Vincent Landon pulls me from the ground and wraps a wool blanket that is scratchy and smells like camping around my shoulders. Places his strong hands on my shoulders and looks at my nose.
“Eli, get in the car. I’ll take you home.”
I look at Vincent, who is tall like truth, and scrunch my face a little.
“Don’t…don’t you need a statement? I was just there on the road and I was walking and-”
“Eli.” He stops me with his voice. “It’s Christmas Eve. You need to be at home.”
I nod and begin to walk away from the upside down truck. Chief O’Shaye with his face swallowed whole by his palms. The tree that has been scarred.
The night that is flecked and sparkling and the moon that is large and looks like young love. And how I want to desperately grab that orb with both hands and hold it to my chest.
Cement Feet
The day after Christmas and it is snowing. Flakes that are large and lazy and are cotton drifting dizzy in the sky.
I am inside and watching Ellie. She was a blank page when I told her the news that night. She cried silently at two in the morning, and I know that it was for the same reasons that I did.
Christmas passed and presents were opened with a chorus of thank you and I love it and many things that were sincere and hollow at the same time. There is a ghost that hangs in the air and it is so very tangible as I make my way out onto the porch and walk out to where Ellie is.
The snow is flurrying and tracing graceful arcs and pasting itself to everything it can. It is hungry for contact.
My thin gloves that are black and are embossed with flakes.