At some point later in the day, his Dad and Uncle came over together with some of the other kids and asked him if he wanted to go to Toys “R” Us for a little bit. Mom and Aunt were going to stay behind. He wanted to be a good, big boy and stay with Grandma Lynnie. He felt it would be a good thing to do, but they insisted and he said ok. They tried to excite him by saying he could get anything he wanted, and that was exciting, but he didn’t know how to feel about it and stayed subdued.
It would be the last time he saw Grandma Lynnie.
>< >< ><
Few could be this lucky. Her husband had not been so lucky, her dear beloved Anthony, passed six years ago now, a heart attack. He passed with no one around.
I’ll be joining you soon my dear, Lynn told herself. She was surrounded by her daughters, her beautiful daughters, the lights of her life; her large, loving family, her gifts and testament to this world.
She held hands and kissed and embraced. At her age, death was a constant. Even as a child, she remembered, death took her three dearest friends; two of them, bizarre freak occurrences. How else to explain two young girls dying in their sleep, within months of each other, no less? Julia and Clare, she remembered them. Clare: quiet, clever Clare. So clever, so quiet, so reserved. Smarter than she’d let on, didn’t talk much because of her lisp, she remembered, but still the first of the group to have a real boyfriend.
And Julia, sweet Julia. It pained her that she couldn’t remember much about Julia other than that she had passed first.
Venice, her other young friend, in a terrible car accident a couple years later. While she was home from college, how tragic. Venice, such a beauty, such a beautiful name, such a beautiful girl. So tragic, so terrible.
She remembered a period of consoling dreams she had, where she told herself that Julia and Clare had died peacefully, painlessly. She’d been asked, crazily, to join them, but no, no, she wanted none of that. She’d been scared of death then, as was to be expected, as a teenager. She wasn’t so afraid anymore. She’d lived her time. She’d lived a good life.
Well girls, I’ll be joining you, and joining all her other dear friends who had taken the next step in the adventure. She hoped she’d join them as teenagers, or else they could greet her as adults of advanced age, as if they hadn’t been taken so abruptly.
Voices now sounded like she was underwater. Her daughters were sobbing, clutching each other, trying to be strong but failing. They consoled each other. They spoke as if she’d already passed. I’m still here, you silly dearies! she thought, but perhaps not. Perhaps this was passing gracefully. She thanked god for painkillers and all the sweet doctors and nurses helping her, such nice people, all the nice people throughout her life, all the fullness she’d enjoyed when others had been taken so tragically.
She drifted off. She lived eighty-two years on Earth.
Between the synapses of her dying brain, she’d live a millennia in agony.
Beneath the sedatives, she felt a disruption. Placid warm comforting water, boiling in an instant. A bouleversement, she thought insanely, a word she didn’t remember ever hearing, no, hearing in a dream, one of those crazy dreams from her youth, that now came back to her with its full wretched meaning intact. That’s how she’d described death to herself in a dream, after her friends’ own deaths, but that was stupid crazy talk from so long ago.
HELP ME! HELP ME! DEAR GOD HELP ME! She reached out, pinioned herself, clamoring against the wall of oblivion encasing her. GOD I FEEL EVERYTHING, HELP ME! HELP ME! HELP ME!
She screamed for her family. FUCK YOU, YOU UNGRATEFUL PIECES OF SHIT, YOU WORTHLESS BITCHES, HELP ME HELP ME!
She reached out in vain but nothing was moving. Every fiber of her being, pin-pricked, aflame, virulent, eyes gouged out, everything organic and important gouged out. KILL THE CHILDREN, KILL THE CHILDREN, she screamed against the perpetual all-consuming pain that all men and women experience upon the precipice of death, the pain that causes them to forsake their loved ones and their lives’ work for even just the barest chance of reprieve.
TAKE KALE, TAKE ROWLAND, TAKE AUDEN, and as if this knowledge had always been there, as if she always had known who she’d sacrifice first to make the galaxy of pain crest. She wanted to feel the sensation, tear Rowland asunder, wretch him with her hands, to transfer the bilious suffering from her to the form of another.
She’d tear Rowland in two with her bare hands to make this stop, she’d squeeze him until he exploded, rive him into stumps and pieces, anyone, please god, oh god please anyone else. OHHHHHH GOD PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE this can’t be right, this can’t be it, a flooding of experience and pain commanding her to escape, to flee death but it’s impossible, she’s an animal being cooked over a flame with every fiber of her being broadcasting the pain as an incentive to remove the spit, a lobster in boiling water with the pot jammed closed, OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD and even that’s what she intended to think but it was nonsense, gibberish.
The drugs did nothing. There was agony under the fog, gibbering, incessant, liquids of acid and organs of twisting thorn. GOD! GOD!, a scream that renders throats a pulping mess, all her years spent on earth resulting in a perpetuity in a boiling fish bowl.
HELP ME HELP ME ACWKKKK HELP ME! FUCK YOU FOR DOING THIS TO ME! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! PLEASE GOD HELP ME! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU DO SOMETHING! HELP ME PLEASE GOD ANYONE! PLEASE GOD ANYONE!
>< >< ><
With great sympathy, the doctor consoled the grieving kin.
“It’s the best anyone could hope for. She was well-loved, well-cared for, heavily sedated. She went peacefully,” and yes, yes, thank God for that.
A Related Corollary
“So,” Cathy began, sitting down at the round table at Argo Tea, her with a TeaLuxe Matte Latte, Megan with a Honey Breeze Cooler. The drinks were on Cathy tonight.
Megan sat, slouched, eyes red, facing the wall in the kind of crestfallen way that reeked of unknowing parody. Dammit, why did it have to be like this? Even though she had no conscious control over her slouch, even though thinking about it gave way too much import to the random machinations of her musculature, the way she sat, slouched, positioned herself, everything seemed inauthentic, too showy. Aww, look at me. Look at me sniffle, look at my bright red eyes, all the while I sip my $4 tea drink in a gentrified neighborhood in a city people would kill to live in, in the richest country in the world. Isn’t life so tough? Megan put her hand to her head as if she had a roaring headache, a hot tear skidding down her right cheek.
“So,” Megan started, without looking up at Cathy, in a way that wasn’t supposed to sound snobby, but did. “I do appreciate you meeting up with me like this, I’m sorry I keep calling you like this, it’s just —”
“No, no, it’s fine. It’s nice to see you again. I just wish you felt better. I wish I could see you being happy.” Cathy lowered her head and looked up exaggeratedly to meet Megan’s gaze, lifting her eyebrows a bit to signal that she was looking for a response. Her full white face widened, a little bit of a goofy grin across her face when Megan acknowledged her. Several years ago back in college, they’d been driving cross country and passed a billboard featuring a white, round-faced clown with a red afro. Now and again, at just the right, frozen angle, Cathy’s white, full face and springy auburn hair brought to mind that lame clown.
Megan smiled.
“Ehh, see, things are looking up already.” Cathy took Megan off Constant Attention Watch and took a deep sip of her TeaLuxe Matte Latte. “Mmm, this is delish. You need to try this.”
Megan took a sip of Cathy’s thick, iced drink, so laden with thickeners and agents that it was questionable to still classify it as tea.
“Mine’s good, too,” Megan said, took a sparrow-like sip of her honey-tinged tea drink, and passed it over to her friend.
Cathy took a slight sip. “Mmm, that is good. Sweet, but not too sweet. Just sweet enough. And i
t’s black tea, too? That’s good for you. Black tea is good for depression,” she parroted the science she’d heard before, knowing it was unhelpful and inconsequential.
There were good drinks and good tastes and good experiences in this world, and rather than talk about her Grand Problems, Megan appreciated the implicit premise of enjoying good things in the world, with the expectation of other good things to come.
Arbitrarily, hazy ennui rolled through her emotional landscape like a slow-moving dark cloud. Now she was just sad, just “blah.” That she had been briefly in good spirits … that was something she could acknowledge but not fathom. If there had been a multiple choice test with the question, “Briefly, Megan had enjoyed something and known happiness,” she could mark it as True and know she was technically correct, but could do nothing more, come to no further understanding. To try to understand why she had felt happy but no longer did was like trying to fill an empty belly with the memories of a great meal.
This was resignation. There was no sharpness here, no momentous upheaval, no drastic feeling of falling. That feeling was for happy people with expectations of continued happiness, coming to terms with a difficult situation. No, this feeling was the reassertion of the primary. This was the gradual but inevitable overtaking of that which had always lain dormant, that which had always been, that which was. Happiness was a brief signal flare against a sky of coal-shadow.
Cathy, intuitively, saw her friend emotionally overtaken.
“Hey, girl, how are you doing?”
Megan looked around the Argo Tea shop. Aesthetically, she appreciated the bright, vibrant decor, the fashionable, youthful crowd that frequented, their sleek electronic and elegant eye glasses and sophisticated reading material that promised engaging conversations and interesting minds.
She appreciated these things, had a mind for ideas and an eye, even, for fashion. That these things conceivably made her life better was undeniably true but of no mind. How could it be that these things which she enjoyed existed, but her spirit cared not one iota? She was a friendly, well-meaning person, with legitimate interests and a legitimate engagement in the world. Exasperated, frustrated, incredulous, over and over she could think of the friends and images that (theoretically) made her happy, yet the sadness that stood in her way was impermeable, inarticulate.
Cathy eyed Megan with a look best described as triumphant empathy. “Megan, life is worth living. Things get better,” she spoke as if she cared or what she said was anything but speculative and clichéd.
Cathy made life sound so good, so intuitive, so full of promise, and for a second Megan could buy into it, but since life as lived is a solitary pursuit, soon she would soon be back in her apartment, tackling the sorrow of the human condition, alone. That bottle of pills promising painless, permanent escape ever-beckoning.
“Megan,” Cathy weaved her face into Megan’s field of vision, making her acknowledge her. “I’m glad you called me today. You promised me, so many times, that you wouldn’t do anything stupid? You promise, right?”
Megan bobbed her head, her mouth a straight horizontal line, just like those showy “smiley” faces she used as an accoutrement when signing her signature, two dots and a horizontal line inside a circle.
“You promise, right? I want to hear that you will never do anything like that.”
“Yes, I promise you. Of course, I promise you.”
“Good. I’m here to talk to you. I’m here now, and I want you to talk to me.”
Megan smiled autonomously.
Just as some cocktail of chemicals and hormones, introduced at certain stages and at certain proportions, led a fetus in utero to become heterosexual or homosexual, this or that, here or there, so too was it with this type of depression. That no name or cause or identifying factor could be pinpointed, no logical assaying could diffuse the mist of sadness that hovered over all which Megan undertook, that by the nature of her make-up such an inquiry was fruitless; well, the science behind that would not be accepted for years to come, and it was of no interest for anyone here. So those pills that offered painless relief stayed stored on the shelf, out of the strength of her reach, high atop the altar of platitudes.
“Things get better,” Cathy offered, up-ending precisely everything humankind knows to be intuitively true about the actual flow of life, as if life wasn’t a narrative that curdled into decay and death, as if, perhaps for the eight billionth person, perhaps the story this time would have a different ending.
“You have so much to live for. Never forget that,” Cathy also offered, which was true in the sense that several others had an interest in Megan’s continued, base survival, and society compelled Megan not to disturb that equilibrium.
Cathy smiled warmly, and why wouldn’t she? Here was her pathetic, interminable wreck of a friend, whose continued pained existence cast her own doubts and tribulations in a more positive light.
“Of course, I’d never do that,” Megan proposed, and Cathy smiled and took it as a victory that Megan would never do anything as stupid as make her own determinations, because the continuation of life, no matter how bleak, that’s a victory.
For a second Cathy thought she saw her friend Kyle through the window. He did live in the area. Cathy had a crush on Kyle, and she didn’t want to introduce Kyle to Megan. Something about Megan’s moody, delicate nature was catnip for the quiet, introverted boys like Kyle.
Cathy noticed Megan’s attention had faded and, despite herself, yearned to regain her focus.
“Promise me,” she pleaded to Megan.
“I promise you.” Megan cemented her promise by extending her hand and putting it atop Cathy’s.
While regaining Megan’s attention, Cathy was mentally preparing herself on how to handle the Kyle situation and was relieved that she needn’t bother. It wasn’t Kyle. Her relief came out as an exaggerated smile.
“Great!”
So Megan pledged herself, pushed herself back into life, and life did she have, back through the same dark, encumbering smog that inhabited her to her very core.
So the promise of painless escape went unexplored, so abominable, so abhorrent was that option, as if death would never come unless it was a choice proactively taken;
so noble was the passive retreat into endless, inescapable depression and her living for the benefit of others, as if life was a joint venture experienced concurrently with others rather than a solitary activity, as if promises and overtures meant anything against that fog of dispiriting ennui;
and how so dignified and graceful was her eventual succumbing to death via whatever terrible misfortune befell her, and if only it served, at worst, as the abrupt punctuation mark on the drawn-out sentence of her life rather than another tortuous experience in-and-of itself, part-and-parcel of the whole.
Surely the invisible God(s) and creators we pretended watched our every move were beside themselves with ecstatic cheers of congratulations for a valiant effort, for the noble will to keep on living.
But at least she had pledged herself, to her friend Cathy and others, and they could pat themselves on the back for that. Eventually, of course, their friendship would become wan and brittle, an echo of whatever it had once been; and after Megan moved out of town, Cathy would find other sad-sack friends to feel better than and other activities to reinforce her feelings of superiority.
Megan smiled at Cathy as if she had any belief that the dark weight would ever lift.
The Gulf of Responsibility
“Gloria, Ms. Hernandez … I can’t help but, I’ve noticed that this is your … your third pr-eg-nan-cy within an 18 month period.”
Alex was surprised how his mouth explored every crevice of the word “pregnancy” — the purr of the “pr,” the bluntness of the hard “g,” the sharpness of the ending “SEE” — surprised at how the word stretched out of his mouth, as if taking twice as long to get the word out mean
t she’d be doubly attentive to his intent. But the condemnation inherent in his articulated “pr-eg-nan-cy” felt mandatory. Not natural coming from him, that’s for sure. Expressing moral outrage seemed so out-of-fashion. Even the term, moral outrage, was hyperbolic. Who is really, legitimately outraged in America anymore? Not Internet-outraged: actually outraged. It’s not cool to pass moral judgment, and that lesson was deeply ingrained in him. But before his subconscious recalled that fact and moved on, it felt good, satisfying, to care about something.
Still, he suppressed his moral outrage and let it transmute into something more palliative and comforting: a sense of superiority. She was in the wrong, he was in the right, and that was enough for him.
“What you mean, ‘you notice?’ You only visiting me because you knew I’m pregnant. But yeah, so? I took care of those, I’ll take care of this, too.”
“Okay.”
“And why not? It’s none of your business. And I am being responsible. What, do you want me to raise a child by myself, without … without any real income? It’s responsible to get an abortion. If I have the baby, then you’d turn around and say, ‘how irresponsible, you on welfare and making more babies.’ You know, if I wanted to game you and your system and get more money, I’d just have the kids. I know you get more money if you have kids. But I’m not gonna do that, I’m not doing that. I’m being responsible.”
Alex nodded, moving his pen on his note pad but not actually writing anything down. She was right, after all. If Gloria Hernandez wanted to secure more money from ‘the system,’ all she needed to do was pop out some more children. Alex had heard all the horror stories, as did everyone else, apparently. Stories of fat welfare queens passed out drunk mid-day on a ratty couch, their tiny box apartments filled with neglected children squirming in closets, wallowing in filth, covered in freakish amounts of piss and shit (‘freakish amounts’ in the sense that you were surprised their guardians had fed them enough to even generate any shit and piss, let alone the volume that made headlines in the New York Post).
With a Voice that is Often Still Confused But is Becoming Ever Louder and Clearer Page 5