3.
Insomniacs both hate and love the night, he thought, waiting for that minute when the darkness would begin to fray, the torn edges of it scraping across the brightly colored roofs of the town, the smoke of its passage turning into bright morning fog, the great breadth and bulk of it dwindling into black, rotted threads as it made its frantic escape back into the caves and sleeping heads from whence it came. Finally the minute did come, and he could almost hear the raw edges of the grass and trees screaming from the abrupt departure of darkness, and his eyes began to water from the stench of the corpses rising from their beds all over town, brushing their teeth, grabbing that last cup of coffee before climbing into their cars for work.
4.
For just a minute the coming night had taken on the dark purple of a bruise, and she wondered what it would be like if all darkness were to remain this color, the color of her cheeks the minute before she left him, the color, that first minute, of the baby she had borne without him. Each day after he beat her she would go out and try to find some member of his family, some mutual friend she could show this darkness to. They would nod, and smile, and offer her tea, gazing at her as if admiring some remarkable sunset.
5.
During that minute when he misjudged the curve of the road, just before he slammed into the damp wall of night, he recalled as a child how he had set out open jars on the lawn in order to capture the darkness. He’d supposed the dark was so heavy that he would have plenty of time to screw the lids on before it could slither out and escape. Each morning before dawn he would slide out of bed and run downstairs only to be disappointed by the bright transparency of the cool glass containers. He considered lining the insides of the jars with double-sided tape or glue to at least give the darkness pause, but such measures felt somehow unnatural to him. Finally one morning something dark and viscous and frighteningly opaque had settled into one of his traps and did not stir when he twisted on the lid. He kept it upstairs under his bed for years, through fire and floods, his parents’ deaths and his first bouts with a black depression. Now as his car exploded from the force of dark he wondered whatever had happened to it.
6.
The dark we begin with ends, but the ending dark goes on forever. As the baby fought its way out of her that’s the lesson she would have wanted to teach it, if she hadn’t been in so much pain, if there hadn’t been just this one initial minute of its birth, and there were suddenly so many things she wanted to tell it. We all think life is going to be different from the way it turns out, she would have said, if the meanings of things hadn’t become so blurred for her. How would she explain both the pleasure and the terror in the anticipation of each new day? Household chores will become almost a religion. There will be days when the fact that one thing follows another will comfort you. When the baby was free and held up to her, at first she could only see the initial night reflected in its eyes, the black shadow cast by the duty she owed this helpless creature. Sometimes the time becomes a sooty blur, all the inefficient hours and wasted days accumulating so that you start wondering what happened to it all. Sometimes even the minutes seem sad and filled with a dark anxiety. And yet still, the baby smiled at her. Just try to keep busy, sweetheart.
7.
The minute after she left him, he did not believe the house had ever been darker. Shadows were stiller, and therefore more intense. Even seconds later, dust and cobwebs seemed more evident, as if the house had been without tenant for months. She had taken with her all their son’s clothes and toys, leaving only one small mateless brown sock on the polished oak of the second floor landing, and a plastic wheel from some lopsided car which would now and forever run in circles. He knew his son would not mind, for to a child a small dark circle can be forever. Only an adult sees the breaks, the terrible possibilities in even one misspent minute. The refrigerator hummed to itself and the air conditioner chattered. He opened the refrigerator door but found nothing inside but a light. The light turned the linoleum a mournful shade of yellow. He went from cabinet to cabinet, finding only shadows and dust, searched the attic and closets for pictures, mementoes, stray scents of their life together. He found nothing. The terrible minute arrived when he realized she was never there in the first place, his son a figment, his life a brief tale and badly told. His abandoned house was in fact his own shabby head, where no one ever enters, no one ever leaves.
8.
She built a huge machine for manufacturing night. Her father was greatly displeased. “All that money I gave you for college, is this what it’s come to?” She shrugged helplessly, a gesture that always infuriated him. She’d always wanted to be a mad scientist, but the role models were all male. She had a girlfriend once who’d owned a butterfly net—that was the closest she had to a mentor. The girlfriend used to run down the street with the net, chasing bugs, leaves, bits of trash, anything airborne, hairpins and curlers falling out of the back of her head like paratroopers jumping out of a plane. So bugs and bits of trash went into the basic design of her machine, curlers and hairpins and her father’s painful frowns. When she turned on her machine one jet-black nugget representing a pure minute of unadulterated night dropped out of the chute and landed at her feet. Her machine never worked again. She puts the nugget under her pillow now, on evenings when her thoughts are too light for sleep, needing its density to bring her back down to earth.
9.
Every night the house breathed, and he listened for his son’s breathing in the house. His son was scared of the dark house. His son was scared of the dark house breathing. And sometimes late at night when the house breathed its fullest, he too wondered where it all might lead. Every night he counted the breaths from his resting son, timing inhalations and exhalations, estimating volume displacements, listening for rattles, for organs damaged or organs suffering a secret weakness. The son did not know of his father’s countings, for the son was far too busy tracking the thunderous breathing of the house. One and two and breathe. Three and four. Five and six. Finally the night came when the father kept on counting, counting a full dark minute, but there was no answering breath from the small form of his son. Nor from the quiet house itself, satisfied at last, and stealing away with all the air.
10.
It was her ignorance that made her what she was. Strangers she did not know directed everything she did. She was always imagining what they must think of her. Everywhere there were people with secrets—it had always been so—they knew things she did not, and they refused to tell her. She did not understand, and yet she loved what she did not understand. There were strangers she was meant to meet and love. There were strangers she kept missing, although she tried her best to be everywhere. People died and because she did not understand death she was afraid they must hate her. When she accidentally stepped on a bug she feared reprisals from its family. When friends went on vacations she thought that, instead of their announced destinations, they traveled to secret places known to everyone but her. When she tried to remember her childhood a dark place appeared in the middle of her head and spread. Minutes passed slowly inside this dark place. A woman in a red dress lived here, with long knives for fingernails. When she asked what time it was, the woman took her hand and pointed with one of the long nails at the watch that had been attached to her wrist all this time. But the watch face bore only a single, black digit. Removing the watch from her arm she discovered a hole in her skin leading down to the dark clockworks inside.
11.
Finally came that minute of true darkness when he realized that there was authentic evil in the world, something beyond the ordinary occurrence of bad things. Famine, murder, genocide were as elemental as gravity. The man down the street set fire to his son for the insurance money. The mother on the next block had drowned her own baby in the bathtub. Five minutes’ drive brought him to the park where a gang of young men raped a young coed. Under the bright lights at the corner, next to the modern convenience store, an old man was stabbed thirty-seven times. He
had a powerful urge to label such things accident. It was a much more manageable label than divine mystery. He could not comprehend his own goodness, so how might he understand his own evil? Suddenly he experienced the urge to kill; he didn’t care who the victim might be. He wondered how it might feel. He wondered if it might make him feel better. He thought he might be capable of killing a young child if he could think of that child as a doll and if he knew that no one would ever find out. He stared for a minute into the dark mirror, and found there the beast.
12.
The man and the woman rested in their basement laboratory, volumes of data stacked to the ceiling: measurements of evening, experiments in night, anecdotal narratives concerning adventures in darkness. One man trapped it, she said. One woman mocked it, he said. One man breathed and ate it. One woman made it her lover. The darkness crouched and wrapped its arms around them. The darkness kissed them with cool lips and a probing, livid tongue. It’s elemental! she cried. It’s alive, he cooed. The darkness wormed its way down their throats and into hearts, lungs, bowels. But their lives seemed no different. Put water into more water, you still have water, they cried, and felt the darkness fill their bellies. The darkness crept through their thoughts, and there was no noticeable change.
AN ENDING
There is nothing more he can say. Perhaps he’s told too much already. His daughter used to complain he had an answer for everything, and now he knows she felt bad about saying that for some time, and now he answers to no one, no matter how much they ask. But there is nothing more he can say about that.
Now that he cannot speak, his thoughts are loose in time. No matter how much she asks, he thinks, as if she could ask, as if she were not gone. Just like him, unable to bear witness to the world. Just like him. So does this mean he, too, is dead?
Of course not. Of course not. Not so long as the neurons fire, illuminating the brain, filling the sky with light. Broadcasting the voices.
The songs they sing are measured in broken air and shattered bone. The power of them lies in the stray wind in the high mountains felt and heard by no one. When they cry the earth cries, and the earth cries often. The darkness that is their subject knows no bounds real or imaginary, rubbing at us all.
But she was correct just the same. Once upon a time he did think he had the answers for everything. Now he understands how little he knew. But he cannot tell her.
And if he could speak, what might he say? What would he talk to her about? What message would he bring to the dead to show he understood even a bit of their plight?
He might say no. He might say yes. He might yadda yadda yadda.
He might say there is a new flower growing in the window box. A yellow tulip, his wife’s favorite. He might tell his wife he still loves her. He might tell her that he loved her and he loves her and he always will. What better thing might a person say?
The strangest thing about his immobility, he thinks, is how much he moves inside it. His chest rises and falls, ever so slightly, not much more palpable than his thoughts, but still discernable. Sweat traces his face like the fingertips of blind angels. Fluids and gasses move deep inside him, down in the hidden chambers of the self.
And his eyes move, even though he is rarely aware of it. He sees, but what he sees could be the dream he’s having, he has no way of telling. He has no way of telling anyone. His eyes might even be cameras, replacements for the eyes he used to have. Click and click again. Can they do such things? They can do so many things he does not understand. He does not understand.
And the world moves, changes and spins because of something he has done. He is done. The world changes colors and brings forth strange and wonderful creatures who dance and lick and scream, and he knows he is the cause, but he does not know how.
In the other bed his wife stares at him. She may have died but he cannot be sure. Sometimes he thinks a look can last longer than a life. She has stared at him so intently for a very long time. She does not miss a thing. He understands that for a very long time she stared at him with a love beyond anything he had ever experienced before, beyond anything he might imagine, but he suspects the intention of that gray-eyed gaze has changed over the time of their imprisonment to become of another kind of focus and intensity, but he was never quite sure what words might best describe this new state. In his more fanciful speculations, in fact, he imagined that his wife invented a brand new emotion: one that goes beyond love, one that factors the despair of knowing, the knowledge that comes from living with death so close at hand.
He prefers to look not into those hazy gray eyes but at her hairline, at that place where the hair parts above the middle of her forehead, where the combined scents of shampoo and brain heat so often gather, where she smells clean and vital, where her smell is like a taste of the entire of her, where he would live forever if he could.
The phone rings again, a physical tearing of the sour air in the bedroom. His daughter’s answering machine picks it up. A loud click followed by another loud click, as if something is snapping. As if the bones of this sorry animal, this answering animal, are breaking, and soon it will answer no more, its sad carcass draped over the nightstand.
Once upon a time it did answer, and so efficiently recorded the details of their daughter’s death, which he would not believe at first, because she only went out for some milk, she promised them both (although neither of them could answer) that she’d be right back, and who could die in such a way, on such a small errand?
The voice on the machine had been so crisp, so professionally sympathetic as it delivered the terrible news, who could not believe it?
Now the male voice on the machine asks, “Are you there? Pick up. Pick up. Are you there?” with an urgency that surprises him. Some boyfriend he does not know about? Was that where she was really going when she left here? Did she tell him about her parents, so that maybe he’ll think to call the police and send them to her house?
There’s always a chance. He used to tell her, from the time she was a little girl, there’s always a chance, sweetheart.
“Are you there?” Even if he could answer, he does not know what he could say.
His daughter left on her little errand eight days ago. He knows because of the calendar on the wall just above his daughter’s desk. He can barely see it, tucked around the corner there, but it is still clear enough. Kittens above the black, dated squares. He cursed her sweet name for her arrogance, so convinced with her nursing degree that she could take care of them both. No nursing home, no nursing home, Dad. Damn her carelessness. And her driving has always lacked caution, no matter how much he tries to teach her. She thought she knew. She thought she knew. Her father’s daughter, she took after him.
No one knows he is here. And no one knows her mother is here. Now the eighth day is passing, slipping like ooze from broken hydraulics, dripping off the edge of the table and out of sight.
And damn her for being dead. She’s broken his heart. And now nothing can be right. There is nothing he can say. Even when there is so much to say.
His wife’s arm hangs limp off the side of the bed. She’s been strapped down, but in that last seizure the cloth tears, the arm flopping free, then limp. He’d wanted to be closer then, but all that moved were his desperate tears.
Eight days and some strong smells have faded, some gradually making their presence known. The smell the body makes as fluids give way. The smell of the orange on the sunny table. The stench as the body dies incrementally. The reek of time, wasted and misused, the days thrown away. The foulness of regret, accumulated until the very end.
His wife was always fussy about matters of toiletry. She had no more odor than a glossy magazine ad. She cared for no variety of incense or perfume, and found even cooking odors somehow rude. She could not be said even to smell fresh. She was cured. She was sealed. She was statuary. Her nose was an anchor for her eyes and nothing more.
Illness, as he would have told her had she just asked, brings indignity. He was the fi
rst to fall, robbed of speech and mobility by a blood clot, and he greatly admired the way she put aside her prejudices in order to take care of him. Even changing him when the aide was off duty. She didn’t complain, not even involuntarily. She simply did what needed to be done for someone she loved. Could he have done the same for her? He wasn’t so sure. At least not with such care, such equanimity.
She’d been bent over him, rearranging his pillow, making it so that it fit perfectly beneath his ears, and he was feeling absurdly grateful, because a crease in the case had been torturing him for hours. Then he detected an ever so faint aroma of urine, and he stared at her in surprise as her expression changed, as if some startling idea suddenly entered her consciousness, and almost immediately he knew it was a stroke—she’d been assaulted by the fairies, and she fell away from him and he couldn’t even shout his outrage at the terrible thing. The anger leaked out of him a bit at a time over the following hours, weeks, and months.
What is left of the woman he loved in the nearby bed he cannot know. There is so much he cannot know.
*
He does not know when the ringing in his ears first began. It seems a recent event but he cannot be sure. He suspects it’s the song the brain sings when it dies but of course there is no way for him to know if this is true. Sometimes it is loud and sometimes it is quite soft. Sometimes it is all he can do not to weep when he hears it.
One of the things his wife and he enjoyed most was listening to music together. Now those days are gone, he thinks, or are they? Perhaps even now they are listening to the same tune.
Suddenly there is quiet as if a door has been closed. This is the way. This is the way. When the view becomes unbearable, then shut the door.
Onion Songs Page 25