Through Shattered Glass

by David B. Silva

  4.

  My last visit with Grandpa Myles came near the end of 1970. It was a Sunday afternoon, in the middle of the school year. Mom had decided to take what had become a rare trip up to Aunt Trudy's for a visit. It was the second trip to my Aunt's house that would forever stand out in my mind.

  Some things ... you don't deserve to forget.

  My parents had officially separated during the latter part of the summer. Unofficially, I suppose they had been separated for the better part of my life. It had been sorely overdue – their parting of the ways. I ended up living with my mother because she insisted while my father remained silent. Then in early October my father had headed south to the Bay Area to live. "To escape the line of fire" was the way he put it before he said goodbye for the last time.

  It surprised me when I realized how much I missed him.

  And seeing Grandpa Myles again ... that was a surprise of a different nature, I suppose. Though it felt much the same.

  I'm not sure what I had expected to find. On the way to Aunt Trudy's my mother made a somewhat clumsy attempt at preparing me. "Sometimes," she said, her eyes straight ahead, keeping a safe distance, "when you're old like your Grandfather is ... well, time catches up with you." Then she told me how his health had been failing the past few weeks. He had never fully recovered from the stroke, of course. And I had witnessed what I had thought was his emphysema over the years, stealing a little of his strength here, a little more of his breath there. But when I had last seen him, he had been a different man.

  I remember standing in the doorway of his bedroom, staring. Someone had propped him up in bed—using three or four pillows to do it—and he looked almost ... breakable. He had lost weight, at least forty or fifty pounds. Pounds he could hardly afford to lose. There was the sour smell of urine in the air. The lower half of his face was hidden behind an oxygen mask, but his cheeks were pasty and damp, almost surreal, the cheeks of an aged mannequin.

  "Lee.”

  "Hi, Grandpa."

  He motioned me further into the room, his frail fingers making an effort out of the motion. The nails of his left hand had all turned black.

  I took two or three steps, then stopped and leaned against the wall. This was as close as I wanted to get, because I already had a pretty good idea of what was happening just across the room from me. "You're dying, aren't you?"

  He nodded, taking a long swallow of oxygen—the mask over his face seemed to make the effort more troublesome for him. Then he spoke again, the words leaking out of him, breathy and asthmatic. "I've run ... out of ... steam," he said, almost smiling.

  "Does it hurt?"

  "Feels ... heavy."

  Next to the bed, someone had strapped the oxygen tank to a handcart; a plastic tube ran from the tank to his mask. Above that, an IV had been hung from a metal stand; another tube ran from there to somewhere beneath the blankets. A plastic bag had been mounted on the side of the bed, fed by yet another tube, this one from a hidden catheter.

  It looked horrible.

  And I realized then that I had gone to Aunt Trudy's with the faint hope of finding the man who had—all those years ago—let me borrow from him, who had told me stories about steam engines and the war, who had later let me follow him down to the railyard. I needed that man. He was the last anchor on a drifting ship. But as I stood there, leaning against the wall, afraid to move any closer, I felt betrayed. It had suddenly occurred to me that Grandpa Myles wasn't much different than my father. They were both men trying to "escape the line of fire." They had simply gone about it in different ways.

  Grandpa Myles was going away, and he was never coming back.

  I don't know how long I stood there in silence before my mother came through the door behind me. She glanced without warmth or concern at Grandpa Myles, smiled without emotion, and said a weak hello. Then she turned to me. "Your Aunt and I are going into town to pick up some groceries. Someone needs to stay here with your Grandfather. You mind?"

  I looked at him, seeing a man who reminded me of that other man, Johnson, who had been so completely aware that he was going to die soon.

  "Lee?"

  "I'll stay with him."

  Grandpa Myles closed his eyes, and I listened as my mother and Aunt Trudy gathered up their coats and purses. His breathing had become shallow, almost peaceful. I wondered if he was aware of what was going on around him.

  "We're leaving now."

  "Have a good time," I said.

  Faraway, the front door closed.

  Grandpa Myles opened his eyes again. Over the rim of the oxygen mask, he looked at me, tired yet focused. A dull ache rose up inside my head. I saw a splash of black, a sprinkle of white, then felt him make an effort to borrow from me. Only he was sending, not borrowing.

  "What are you doing?"

  I want you to understand, he whispered in my head. I want you to understand what it's like.

  "To be dying?"

  Yes.

  "Tell me."

  He closed his eyes again, peacefully this time, as if he might never open them again. And in my head, he said, I'm not ... afraid, Lee. Not of death. I want you to know that. It's the blackness that scares me. He swallowed up another deep breath and surprised me as much by what he didn't say as what he did. I had expected him to tell me how godawful it was to be attached to the network of tubes that fed him and pissed for him and breathed for him. Instead, through both bitterness and fear, he said, It's been at it a long time, Lee. Since that night on the railroad tracks. Growing inside me like a black cancer. It's not emphysema, Lee. And it wasn't a stroke. I guess you could say it's the price you pay.

  When he looked up, his eyes were shining with tears.

  I took a deep breath. He didn't need to say anything more, I knew what he wanted.

  I suppose if I had had to do it by hand, if I had had to pinch off his oxygen tube with my own fingers, I couldn't have done it. But I was lucky—if you could call it that—because I had a touch of a different sort. I only wish I had understood what he had tried to tell me.

  It was, in fact, easier than I care to admit, easier than I ever would have imagined. That was the part that scared me the most that afternoon. How easy I made it seem.

  I focused on the plastic tube running from the tank to his mask, and in a matter of a few seconds, it collapsed in the middle.

  The air stopped flowing.

  I guess I thought it would be peaceful. And at first, it was. Grandpa Myles nodded to me, gratefully it seemed, then closed his eyes once more.

  There was a moment when it seemed as if it was all over.

  Then his body went into a sudden, violent throe. He grabbed for the oxygen mask with his right hand, struggling to pull in another breath, the effort both courageous and strangely ineffective.

  Lee?

  Please, Lee, I was wrong.

  "No you weren't," I whispered. "You were right."

  Please, he said inside my head.

  Something aloof and emotionless had settled over me like a fugue. I couldn't stop. I didn't care.

  He opened his mouth wide, and I heard a faint, faraway gasp as he struggled for another breath. The sound slowly trailed away. His mouth went slack. And he closed his eyes one last time.

  The voice inside my head grew faint, then disappeared altogether.

  5.

  Everyone has his secrets, my grandfather had told me. You hold yours close to you, and you stay away from those that belong to someone else.

  This was my big secret.

  I stood there, leaning against the wall, staring at him, for I don't know how long. I remember crying. It had been so unreal, I had half-expected him to open his eyes again, to look at me and smile and start talking about the old Alcos. Instead, the room turned bitterly cold, and I cried.

  I didn't kill him to save him from suffering. I killed him because I could, and because he was going to leave me anyway, and because at that moment I lost control and didn't think it would make any difference.


  But it did.

  That afternoon, something thick and black was given birth inside me. My grandfather had described it as being like black smoke shooting out of the stack of a steam engine. I hadn't understood him then. I'm not sure I fully understand even now. Only that it's not like black smoke from a steam engine. It's more like a hole that starts out the size of a pinhead and slowly, methodically devours everything healthy and decent in a person.

  They did an autopsy on Grandpa Myles. Eventually, without my assistance, he would have died his own death. His organs had all turned black, had all begun to harden. The medical examiner said he had never seen anything like it. Even the man's arteries had taken on a grayish-black discoloration.

  Call it guilt, if you want. Call it justice. I guess you could call it the price you pay. It doesn't really matter.

  There aren't many people in the world like my grandfather and me.

  Maybe that's a good thing.

  Alone of His Kind

  All of them strangers.

  For some reason, Foss hadn't prepared himself with the idea of meeting strangers. Now that he was standing inside the doorway, though, he realized that was exactly what had brought him to the soup kitchen. Not just a chance to get out of the apartment again, but a chance to re-introduce himself back into the company of other people. After Ellie had died, because he didn't think he could stand being in bed without her next to him, he had slept on the living room couch for nearly six months. Now, he was trying to find out if he could stand being back in public without her.

  A woman, with a baby in one arm and a dirty-faced six year old boy hanging on the tail of her sweater, opened the door behind him. Foss moved to one side, pulling the collar of his coat tighter around his neck. An angry gust of cold January wind ushered her through. For the briefest of moments, he shared a glance with her, two lost souls, neither able to conceal the desperation that brought a person to a place like this. It was a straight-in-the-eye moment. Her pupils were pure black marbles, no peaceful dreams behind them, no promising tomorrows. But neither were there any visible regrets. She tried to smile, though it looked painful on her face, then she hoisted the baby higher in her arms and started toward the serving counter at other end of the room.

  Foss closed the door. Without another thought—he was here now, there wasn't much sense in turning around and leaving—he fell in line behind the woman and her two kids. The dining hall was a long, narrow room, lined on both sides with row after row of empty cafeteria-style tables. The walls were papered with an endless gallery of flyers and posters that had been taped and stapled to the plaster, a giant bulletin board of information on government and private services, even the local Bingo night at the Grace Baptist Church on the corner of Fourth and Saint Thomas. Not the kind of place where a person came if he had another choice.

  In a corner near the front door—where the fluorescent lighting fell short and it was dim around the edges—Foss managed to find a table to himself. He settled in there, with a plate of hot beef stew, and watched the steady line of new faces come wandering through the door, half-frozen and twisted with hunger, until eventually the faces all started to look alike to him. After awhile, he quit glancing up when he heard the door open. It was easier than admitting he didn't care. Or he couldn't care. Since Ellie's death, it was hard to tell the difference.

  “Any papers?”

  Foss looked up from his plate, startled, and encountered a man in his late thirties, early forties, about the same age as nearly everyone else who had come through the front door this evening. He was bundled up for the winter weather, wearing an over-sized pea coat with the collar up above the tips of his ears, black gloves, heavy boots, a Giants baseball cap. It wasn't until he quit leaning against the table and stood straight up that Foss noticed one arm was easily six inches shorter than the other.

  “Huh?”

  “Newspapers? You have any newspapers?”

  “No,” Foss answered. “I'm sorry.”

  “No reason to be sorry.” The man started away, dragging his right foot behind him; and it was at the same instant that Foss realized one leg was shorter than the other, that the man stopped and turned around. “You do read, though, don't you?”

  “Not the newspaper.”

  “Too depressing?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “That's why I quit reading them.” He motioned to the empty chair across the table from Foss. “Mind if I join you?”

  “No. Go ahead.”

  “Name's Jas.” He pulled the chair out, sat down, and reached out with his misshapen limb to shake hands. “First time you've been in here, isn't it?”

  Foss froze, staring uneasily at the stranger's hand. The fingers were fat and stubby, little dwarf fingers, about the size of Vienna sausages. He was frightened by the thought of shaking that hand, afraid that he might somehow make it worse than it already was. “Herb Foss,” he said finally. The handshake was quick and frail.

  “First time, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Thought so. The food any good?”

  Foss shrugged. “It's a little like eating at a school cafeteria.”

  Jas smiled. “I never take a meal here. The stuff can kill you.”

  Foss glanced down at his plate. There was a layer of coagulating fat already beginning to take shape across the top of the beef stew. When the man speaks the truth ... He pushed the food discreetly aside. “If you aren't here for the food, then what are you doing here?”

  “Papers. I'm collecting papers.”

  “Thought you didn't read?”

  “They aren't for reading.”

  The woman who had come in right after Foss, went by on her way out. The baby in her arms was on the verge of falling asleep, but the little boy was slapping each table he passed with the palm of his hand, full of renewed energy now that his stomach was full. She seemed mechanical in the way she moved, completely unaware of the world around her. When she opened the door, another gust of wind blew in. Then she was gone.

  “What about you?” Jas asked.

  “Huh?”

  “What are you doing here? It can't be the food.”

  “No, it's not the food.” Foss stared at the door a moment longer, wondering briefly if the woman had a husband, where she stayed at night, what kinds of childhood memories her children would have when they were grown. Loneliness was scary no matter what form it came wrapped in, no matter how you chose to wear it. “Just feeling sorry for myself, I guess.”

  “Nothing wrong with that.”

  Briefly, his mind wandered off to Ellie. It was nearly impossible to remember her before the cancer had hollowed out her body. When he closed his eyes, he saw sunken cheeks and pencil-thin fingers and eyes nearly submerged in their sockets. Thank God she had never stopped smiling. That was one feature the cancer had failed to wipe from his memory.

  “… lost someone close to you, didn't you?”

  “I'm sorry. What?”

  “I said, I bet you recently lost someone close to you.”

  Something deep inside Foss let out a long-held sigh of relief, and he tried a smile that didn't feel right. “It shows?”

  “Enough.”

  “My wife,” he said quietly. “I lost my wife.” Then he buried his face in his hands, because it was all right there again, right on the surface, as brutal as the day she had died. It took a deep breath to bring him back under control. Then a heavy silence slowly floated down around the two men. The surrounding pandemonium faded further and further into the background, like a scene from a movie. When it was done, they were the only two people left in a world where everyone else was too busy.

  Foss used his dinner napkin to wipe his face.

  He took another deep breath. “God, I miss her.”

  “I lost a daughter,” Jas said quietly. His voice had the sound of a faraway echo. For a moment, his gaze had drifted off to the other end of the room, then he stared down at the Styrofoam cup Foss was holding in his
hands, as if the words were safer spoken to something inanimate. “In an automobile accident when she was eight. Her name was Purdy.”

  “We never had kids,” Foss said.

  Jas smiled, mostly to himself. “You missed something special,” he said softly. “Kids have a way of reminding you what it's like to be alive. It's too easy to forget, otherwise.”

  An old man, carrying a battered suitcase, came through the front door. He stood there a moment, soaking up the warmth, before finally moving to the serving counter at the far end of the room.

  Jas watched him walk by, then turned to Foss again. “It still hurts. It'll be four years, Christmas Eve, and it hurts like it was yesterday. I wish I could tell you something different.”

  “I wouldn't believe you if you did.”

  “Maybe not. But you'd want to.”

  One of the volunteers finally had to ask them to leave. They had talked—on and off between periods of quiet reverie—for nearly two hours. It was 7:30 now. The evening temperature had dropped ten to fifteen degrees since Foss had first arrived. It was cold enough for the first snow of the season now.

  Foss took a deep breath. Behind him, the fluorescent lights inside the dining hall went off. The entire city block seemed suddenly darker. “Getting late,” he said, blowing warm air into his cupped hands. “Maybe I should be going.”

  “Which way you heading?”

  “Seventh Street.”

  “I'm heading that way, if you don't mind?”

  “Not at all.”

  The street, cast beneath a veil of grayish-black shadows, was shouldered by a series of abandoned store fronts, their plate-glass windows boarded over, their walls spray-painted red and orange and black with graffiti. A month's worth of garbage had collected in the gutters, some of it rotting and infested. Two blocks up, the northwest corner of a neglected tenement building had begun to crumble, dusting the sidewalk with the thin, grayish-red color of brick and mortar. Not many vehicles found their way down here, not this deep into the underbelly of the city.

  They crossed the street, toward a broken street light, Jas limping more noticeably now.