The technical term is necrotized.
The point is I was not always serious.
No, the point is we’re limited.
The doctor said, A machine is making him breathe.
He did not use the word machine.
I said I would have to call my mother to get her advice, and my brother said, Don’t be a dumbass, and the doctor sighed in that way that the assholes I have dated since this night sigh when they don’t get what they want.
Like the restaurant is out of chicken wings. Like the beer is flat. Like I’m trying to convince them I’m a terrible person. Like I’m already stepping into my skirt.
I’m already reaching for the doorknob, a bigger whore than they want me to be.
The sigh applies pressure to the woman. Then the woman is supposed to give them what they want.
Which is to say the woman is then supposed to perform.
Which is to say the woman is then supposed to know the subtle difference between being a woman and performing one.
I said, I’m calling our mother.
My brother said, Don’t.
I thought I could get her on the line. I didn’t know if it would work. It involved disconnecting the call. It involved dialing her number. It involved reconnecting the call, hoping everyone was still on the line.
The metaphor is unintentional.
I mean of disconnection.
There is no intentional metaphor in this story.
There is no intentional meaning in this story.
I would not subject you to intentional meaning.
I would not subject you to some grand scheme.
My mother was in Miami. Which wasn’t where she should have been. But I wasn’t where I should have been. No one was, when you think about it. I mean when you really think about it. I don’t mean anything deep about anything deep. I just mean I was confused. Yet I disconnected, pressed some buttons, and there was my mother. Then I reconnected, and there we all were.
I said, They want me to kill Dad.
My mother had left my father thirty years before. There is no reason to go into the details. Suffice it to say it was his fault, as if that wasn’t already clear.
I mean look at me. Look at my history.
I was not calling my mother because she loved my father. I was not even calling her because she was my mother. I was calling her because she was a nurse. I hoped that because she was a nurse she would tell me the right thing to do. I’m not talking morally. I’m talking medically. She knew about this. Though of course once she was wrong. Once she was dead wrong. I mean when my ex flatlined the first time. When she said, He’ll never be the same. She was, of course, dead wrong. He was one hundred percent the same. He was one hundred percent the same in every way.
Impossible, a doctor might have said.
Not impossible, I might have said.
He was a vegetable going under, a vegetable coming back.
But his heart, a doctor might have said.
I might have laughed.
I might have said something regrettable.
My mother said, What.
My brother said, Tell her.
The doctor said, He flatlined.
My mother said, You have to kill him.
She did not, of course, use these words. I don’t know why I’m being so melodramatic. She used technical terms. She said, Take him off the respirator. She said, It’s the right thing to do. She said, Trust me. She said, I need to go, though. She said, I need to get to work. She said, I’m sorry.
And because I more often than not do the wrong thing, I said fine.
A few days later, because I was older, because the decision was mine, I would donate my father’s body to science. I would do this over the phone, and the conversation would be recorded. A woman would ask me questions I had not before this heard.
Do you wish to donate the lungs.
Do you wish to donate the heart.
There were other organs one doesn’t think of.
There were other things besides organs.
The tissue was to go to the tissue bank.
The eyes were to go to the eye bank.
There were other things I can’t remember.
But it was the thought of the eyes removed from the head, the thought of the eyes going their own way, that made me cry. I don’t know why this was. I was not suddenly a believer of the soul. I was not suddenly a believer of anything. It was just think about it.
And as I cried, the woman said, It’s okay, said, Let it out, and I stopped crying and sat there, silent, and the recording went on, just recorded my breathing, the woman’s breathing, the sound of static in the phone, and minutes passed.
And I thought for some reason of a night years before, me, my father, and my brother in some fast-food place. My brother was visiting home from college, and he was sticking his French fries into his milk shake, and I said, Sick, and he said, Fuck you, and I said, Fuck you, and he said, Try it, dumbass, and I stuck a French fry into the milk shake, and it was amazing. My father was poor then, always poorer the next day, living in some shit hole, like a hostel, like a hospital, like a halfway house, and my brother said he would take him to dinner. Anywhere you want, he said. My father wanted to go to the fast-food place. He met us there. He was filthy. His shirt was missing buttons. He ordered two cheeseburgers. He ordered onion rings. He ordered an orange soda. He ate too fast. And, watching us stick French fries into the milk shake, he said, You’re both sick. But then he tried it too, and then he laughed, and then we ordered more French fries and another milk shake, and what I’m trying to say is, you should try it. What I’m trying to say is. What I’m trying to say is.
I did not donate the eyes to the eye bank. At some point I said, I can’t.
The parts that didn’t go to science were burned. And, no, I did not want the ashes. I told the woman to send the ashes to my brother. Because my brother was a better person than I was. He was a total asshole, I told the woman, but he was still a better person than I was. I said, He’s a total asshole. But in the grand scheme, I said. In the big grand scheme, I said. And I laughed, meaning I really laughed, and the recording went on, and the woman cleared her throat, and I just kept on going.
The day the ashes arrived, my brother called me and said, What the fuck, and I said, What, and he said, What the fuck, and I said, Grow up.
There are no more details to tell.
There is no reason to go into the why of my father.
Or the why of madness, which I cannot answer.
Or the why of addiction, which I also cannot answer.
Or the why of poor, which I also cannot answer.
Suffice it to say it’s always about a loss of something. Then a loss of some things. Then a loss of all things.
Then he was already dead, some might say.
What do you mean, I might say back.
If he had already lost everything, some might say, then he was already dead.
Yes, I might say.
Then you didn’t kill him, some might say as they moved toward me.
That’s not the point.
Then what is.
The doctor said he was sorry for our loss.
My brother said, You did the right thing.
Then a lot of serious shit happened in a lot of serious places. My mother drove to work. The doctor flipped a switch. My brother made coffee. The sun rose somewhere, set somewhere else. A brown recluse hunched in the dust.
And the truth is I don’t always leave in the mornings.
Some mornings the guy wants to get to work, and so I have to leave, but the truth is I don’t want to.
Some mornings I’m still lying in their beds, and they’re like, You need to leave, and I just lie there staring at their backs.
Some mornings I note the rib cage. I note the organs seething beneath the rib cage. I note the fragility of what does not, at night, seem fragile.
Some mornings I am not the whore they want me to be.
I am not the killer they want me to be.
Some mornings I try to no avail. To absolutely no avail. To no avail I try, and they get up to make coffee, and I get up and step into my skirt, and I pull on my shirt and walk home.
And the woman performs happy woman on a sunny street.
The woman performs this all feels good this all feels really good.
The woman pulls it together. She pulls it tight. She further tightens that which tightens.
There were late nights he would call from a pay phone, a friend’s house, a hospital, and because it was late, and because I was not poor, and because I was not ferociously mad, but, rather, mad mad, a machine answered my phone and lied that I wasn’t there eating in bed, watching TV, lied that I would return the call.
The machine would then say, Hello, stranger.
The machine would then say, It’s your father, stranger.
There were voices in the background.
There was traffic in the background.
I’m okay, stranger, the machine would then say.
There was screaming in the background.
There was me in my bedroom.
Pick up the phone, the machine would say loudly.
I know you’re there, the machine would say louder.
There was me turning the TV all the way up.
There was every poor soul looking downward.
There was me not believing in the soul.
There was me waiting, counting seconds, staring at the wall.
My mother said good-bye and disconnected first. Then the doctor said good-bye and disconnected. After the doctor disconnected, there was silence, but I said, Hello. I was hoping my brother was still on the line. I wanted to laugh or something. I said hello again, but my brother had disconnected too.
And before I ran downstairs to the massive kitchen that was my kitchen, I sat on the edge of my bed, still holding the phone.
I imagined the doctor arriving home that morning.
I imagined the doctor taking off his scrubs, washing his hands, and climbing into bed with his beautiful wife.
I imagined him easing into his wife’s heat, the way I once eased into my ex’s heat.
Before we had a sense of what came next.
Before we had a sense that something came next.
Firefighting.
Warrensburg, Missouri.
Me in my bed eating cold lo mein.
Me eating egg rolls, watching TV.
You have to trust me.
There was no grand scheme.
I would quit my job. I would leave that place. I would cross the state line. I would cross another. I would cross another.
And here I am now in a different state.
There is the man digging through the trash.
There is the gem buried in the mess.
Listen. It was not a shit hole.
It was not that.
Call it what you will, but there were cowboys there, for God’s sake, standing on corners in the biggest hats you have ever seen.
There were tornadoes that would send you into space.
There were spiders that would necrotize your ass.
There was a sky turning light. The same sky as everywhere turning light.
Call it what you will, but there I was, same as you were, under that sky.
There I was, just some poor soul. Same as you.
SUPERNOVA
When the plane crashed, I was all messed up. I was all kinds of all messed up. Because first we’d had drinks. Next we’d smoked. There were pills we’d taken from a bowl on the floor. The pills all did their different things. We liked not knowing what they would do. It didn’t matter which way we went.
When the plane crashed, I was on a couch. I was in this place, Club Midnight. It was where we went when it got too late. Or there was nowhere else to go. A guy was sitting next to me. He was a guy I knew from school. He was a guy I hardly knew. It didn’t matter that he was there. It was always a lot of us sitting there drinking. A lot of us always were sitting around.
There’s nothing to say about the guy. This is not the place for adjectives. I wasn’t even looking at him. The pills from the bowl had spilled to the floor. And no one was rushing to pick them up. I made no move to pick them up. I just sat there thinking they’d get crushed. I was waiting for the boot that would come to crush them. I was thinking of the sound the boot would make. I was thinking of the person attached to the boot. The beautiful person we all could blame.
At first the guy wasn’t looking at me. But when the plane was falling from the sky, I felt him writing on my arm. And before he could finish what he was writing, I said, Stop.
I don’t know how to tell the next part. It was like I knew a plane had crashed. Even though I was all messed up. Even though I was thousands of miles from the plane. It was like I had a premonition. Or I felt a reverberation. I mean I felt a crash push through my skin. Not from his pen. Not what you think. It was more like air pushing through. Or a song pushing through. It was more just like a ghost.
Winter was creeping in again. The holidays, again. I would not be doing much that year. The same thing I did every year. Going to my father’s house. Not eating what my father made. Staring at my father across the table staring at me. Glaring across the table because he never let me do a thing. My father, who thought he’d saved my life.
The other kids all studied abroad. They came back home all better than me. They knew things I didn’t know. There were lamp-lit roads they talked about. There were churches made of stone. There were whores in windows lit by red lights. I could see myself walking the lamp-lit roads. I could see myself small in a hollow church. I would be too far for my father to find. But my father said no to study abroad. You’re not ready, he said. You don’t study, he said.
It wasn’t technically a crash. It was technically an explosion. It was technically a fireball. Technically, it was a lot of things. What I mean is, it was meant.
It then took just the sound of a plane. Or a trail of smoke. Or a shadow moving fast and wide across grass. And the terrible way my brain worked. The way my brain said duck. And fast. And now. And I would lie in the snow. I would lie under trees. I would wait for the plane to pass overhead. Or for the smoke to disappear. Or for my brain to tell me, Get up. Or for the plane to crash.
I knew the chance of a crash was small. A plane would not likely drop from the sky. I would not likely be crushed on the ground. It was all of it unlikely. And I knew that it wasn’t just planes. That cars could swerve. That trains could derail. I’d once seen a bus that had gone off the road. It was upside down in a field. But this didn’t make me afraid of buses. Because there was something different about crashing on land. I mean it was different from crashing to land.
As a kid I wanted to walk a tightrope. I’d seen a circus on TV. I’d watched it with my father. I liked the tightrope walker most. I liked the thin stick he held on to. And how he stared ahead to the other side. And how he would make it clear to that other side. Or how, perhaps, he would not.
There were photos all over of the crash. It’s not enough to say raining metal. It’s not enough to say twisted metal. Or that the people on the ground were stuck in the storm. Or that I wasn’t there, of course, in the storm. Because I was thousands of miles away, of course. I was sitting around Club Midnight. And pills were spilled out onto the floor. And a guy was writing on my arm. He wrote the first four letters of my name. I imagine he planned to write the fifth. But I said, Stop.
There was a service in a church. I went because it was right to go. I went because everyone went. Before the service, we stood outside. Someone had something to smoke. Someone else had pills. We went to the service all messed up. I was too messed up to feel a thing. It wasn’t a big deal, being messed up. The whole world was a mess.
Then were the times lying flat in the snow. It didn’t make sense, my lying flat. I know this now. It would not have saved me, lying flat, from a storm of metal crashing.
&
nbsp; To my friends I said, I’m fine. I said, I am. But they looked at me like, You’re not fine. But I am, I said. Because I was, I thought. Because I didn’t know her well enough to be anything other than fine.
The guy was laughing at me. I was too messed up to laugh. My tongue felt covered in fur. Clouds had formed, and I fell into them, one by one. I said, My tongue. I said, My God. I didn’t mean to say this. I didn’t mean to say anything. I didn’t want a conversation. It had started to snow, and I wanted to go outside. Because the snow just seemed like more than snow. It was something about the light. I didn’t know what it was. But the guy said, Your tongue, and laughed again. And then I was falling into him. And if I must use an adjective, right now, right here, I would use beautiful.
I know I shouldn’t have been driving. The roads were a mess. Murder, my father would have said. Murder, every time it snowed. But there I was, rising from the couch. There I was, surrounded by clouds. Next I was in the driver’s seat. And there he was beside me. And there were the holiday lights in windows. And the lit-up trees in windows. And the reflection of my car. And the reflection of us inside the car. And there was my building. There were the stairs leading to my door.
I said I wanted to walk a tightrope. My father said, Do you want to be killed. I didn’t want to be killed. I wanted to be something else. I wanted to be between living and not living. Just for the time it would take to walk the tightrope. Just for the time it would take to make it to the other side. Or for the time it would take to fall. Over my dead body, my father said. I would go to school like everyone else. I would read and write like everyone else. I would graduate like everyone else. I would go to college. I would get a job. I would live in a house. I would have kids. And eventually I, like everyone else, would die.
There’s nothing to say about the service. Someone spoke. Then someone else spoke. Then someone played guitar. Because she played guitar. Because it’s how she would have wanted it. That’s what everyone said. She would have wanted it that way. As if anyone ever could really know. I hardly even knew the girl. She went to my school. I sometimes smoked with her after class. I sometimes saw her in Club Midnight. But it was always a lot of us drinking. It was her and it was the guy from the couch. It was others too, and we sometimes talked. And perhaps I lit her cigarette once. Perhaps she cupped her hands around mine. But she went off to study abroad. And I, as you know, did not.
Spectacle: Stories Page 3