by Dan Dalton
She isn’t my girlfriend, I say. Jon apologises. The thing about words is that they can’t be unsaid.
Rain drives through the zipper of the mackintosh I’m wearing, the kind fishermen have. I don’t know who it belongs to. We leave our catch and seek shelter in the cabin. I de-mack, slump to my seat. Jon tries the engine. It labours, turns over. I’m gonna raise the prop, he says. Won’t be as fast but should keep us clear of debris. I stare at the floor. He waits for words that don’t arrive, lets my silence drown in the sound of the engine.
Four words repeat in my head: I. Can’t. Do. This.
In our bubble we’ve collapsed to the floor in laughing fits because an intern at her office only just discovered Jeff Buckley drowned in 1995. She came in dressed in black, sobbing. Sophia shows me her Instagram tribute: Can’t believe it. So young. So sad. RIP Jeff. Later, we’ll punctuate silences, inappropriate moments, with a solemn RIP Jeff and crack up all over again.
In our bubble we fell fast, intertwined, codependent, spun together in an earthbound spiral. We tumbled through vinyl afternoons, latex mornings. We spent days in bed, pushed everything else away. Flaked on friends. Fixed cocktails, cancelled plans. I skipped work, skipped therapy. We were insatiable, intoxicated. We lost perspective. There was nothing keeping us afloat. I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to. I fell further, faster. Too far. I didn’t care. You make me feel so good. It grew fragile, precarious. I wanted more. Lust crazed, love sick. Lost. She bailed. She had to. Pulled the cord before she hit the floor. Landed on solid ground. I can’t do this any more.
It’s not suicide if you catch yourself.
I’m still falling.
Over the sound of the pistons, a quiet song. Jon is singing to himself. It’s not a shanty. It’s one of his, one of my favourites. I quietly sing the lines with him. Lyrics my lips haven’t said in a long time. They remember. This song was my first of his. Tears well in my eyes as he hits the chorus. I think about Sophia. About how much she hates Jon’s music, his band. I laugh. It’s not a loud laugh. It doesn’t last long. But it tempers the tears. Tames them. I taste salt between my lips, let them fall open. I join Jon on the second verse, softly at first, slowly letting my lungs fill, until I take a deep breath and sing with everything I have. He leaves the wheel, sits with me. We sing, his arm over my shoulders, trembling as I choke back tears. We sing as hard as we know how. For us. Because it feels good. Every goddamn line. Even the storm quiets to hear us.
The boat sits low in the river. Jon is slouching over the wheel, tilting to one side. It’s hard to tell who is steering who. Maybe we got lost in the fog, I say. Nonsense, he says. River only goes two ways. Way we came, and the way we’re going. It’s hard to argue with his logic. I can’t figure anything in this fog, I say. He laughs. What’s to figure, he says. The fog is the thing.
I’m thirty-one and she’s breaking my heart. Her text is simple: I can’t do this any more. I loose a single word as I read it: Fuck. This is how the bubble bursts, not with a bang but a whisper.
I reach to my back pocket. Fuck, I say. My notebook is still on the train.
If you can only see one cloud, you might be in the middle of it.
Eleven
Nebraska / Greed, Part II
Shapes and shadows move in the mist, all faded silhouettes, faint whispers. In a silent pantomime I see my brother and me riding through the woods on bikes. My brother and me playing with Tomorrow Knights. My brother and me climbing trees. Through a clearing I see us on the river bank. We must be eight, nine, dressed like unspecific superheroes.
Across the river, Sophia and I stand either side of a toddler, helping her walk. Our daughter. Sophia smiles at me. I’m dressed the way I always thought I might someday: cotton shirt. A blazer. The kind of shoes people admire. She’s in a dress, a Burberry coat. We look so happy. I close my eyes, keep them shut tight, the way kids do when they pretend to be invisible.
Hope is the cruellest emotion.
You wanted that, Jon says. Kids. I nod. Never made sense before, I say. But with her, I could see it. Jon doesn’t reply. He watches my eyes drop lower until I’m staring at the floor. Sometimes I dream about her pregnant. Sometimes we’re at the hospital, being handed our baby for the first time. Sometimes we’re out for a walk, holding her hands. He approaches several sentences, swallows them. Finally he changes the subject: How come you never talk about your brother.
I’m seven, my brother is eight, we’re racing our bikes through the woods. He keeps racing ahead, telling me I’m slow. Frustrated, I crash into him on purpose. I don’t realise that part of my pedal is broken, that the metal sticking out is sharp. It tears a chunk of flesh out of his leg. I wrap my T-shirt around it and help him hobble home. He needs seven stitches. He doesn’t talk to me for weeks.
I’m thirteen and my brother is fourteen, we’re on holiday with our parents. There’s a girl at the resort I like. He hooks up with her right in front of me. I don’t leave my room for two days. We tore chunks out of each other growing up, physical, emotional. They were always forgiven.
But then, there were always more chunks to tear.
I say: I talk about my brother all the time.
Jon says: No, champ, you barely mention him.
The river swells, swallows the tree line, kicks up silt that swirls muddy brown in our wake. An orchestra of raindrops play a coda on the cabin roof. What I love about rain is it has substance, atmosphere. There’s something arrogant about the sun. Something smug. Rain is relatable.
It must be mid-afternoon. Jon is soberish, skippering with all his heart. We’re floating above a highway now, the lamp posts rising from the sound a dead giveaway. Their swan necks crane over the surface, glow bright in the gloom. A road trip in a boat is still a road trip after all.
Jon says: When was the last time you saw your therapist.
When my brother and I weren’t playing Tomorrow Knights, we made up our own heroes. We’d tie towels round our necks, slip underpants over our trousers. My superpowers were on the abstract end: being able to look at my watch as the second hand passed the 12. Appearing to be sound asleep when our parents came to tuck us in. Running really fast whenever I wore my red trainers. Most people want to be able to fly. Not me. My favourite heroes couldn’t fly. They had wires, webs, retractable wings. They had to figure out ways to catch themselves.
The call is faint at first. Hello. A voice in the fog. Is anyone there. Up ahead, port side, a hazy silhouette that slowly sharpens into focus. A woman, standing on a jetty. Jon manoeuvres us alongside, I jump out with a rope. The jetty is a mostly submerged truck, sitting perpendicular to the river. I tie off the rope on an upright exhaust. The woman steps forward, smiles. My therapist. Dr Young. Emily. It’s never particularly surprising to see people you know wandering around your own mind, but the moments they choose to appear can sometimes feel a little on the nose.
Haven’t see you in a while. I ask her how long it’s been. I’m supposed to see her every week. I’ve lost track. A month, maybe. Six weeks. Too long. We sit down. I should have come to see you. She smiles politely, asks how I’ve been. Things have been a little unusual, I say, nodding towards Jon. He’s sitting at the wheel, singing sea shanties, replacing all maritime references with the word river. I can see that. she says. We’ve got an hour. What’s on your mind.
The way you remember which is port side is this: left and port have four letters.
Other four letter words: Love. Hope. Stay. Don’t. Fuck.
Emily and I have been seeing each other for a year, meeting a couple of times a month. She’s not my first therapist. I had another, before. Stopped seeing her when I met Sophia. In our bubble my brain was mostly bearable. I swapped self-care for Sophia and thought everything would be okay.
I’m thirty-one, going cold turkey off my meds, drinking wine, sobbing into yesterday’s T-shirt. Suddenly stopping a course of antidepressants is strongly discouraged. So is excessive drinking. It says so on the pamphlet in the box, but I
didn’t check. I’m not big on instructions.
Cymbalta. 30mg. If you stop taking this shit without tapering off, side effects may include: suicidal tendencies, uncontrollable crying, and a sudden desire to listen to eighties power ballads.
First thing Emily did was ask me to build a safe space, a place in my mind I could retreat to when things were stressful. Somewhere that would calm me down. I imagined a forest, described the scene to her. I said I’d been there once, that I’d seen redwoods. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t.
Emily is making notes as I speak, but her eyes never leave me for long. She’s in her forties, slight, sharp-featured, smartly dressed. The word that best describes her is warm. If she wasn’t a therapist, she might be a primary school teacher. Sometimes, when I get particularly sad, tears well in her eyes. What she does is takes whatever is upsetting me and offers ways to help deal with it.
Less a therapist, more a pain whisperer.
It doesn’t sound like you’re being very kind to yourself, she says. Jon laughs, tells her about the billboards, my Technicolor torso forty feet high. She asks if that’s true. I don’t get to decide those things, I say. They just are. The look I give Jon is brine and chum. He waves himself away. Of course you get to decide, she says. I see my reflection in the water. Rippled, distorted. She doesn’t want me any more, I say. Emily gives me a look that says we’ve been over this. You think if you looked different, she says, she’d come back. I nod. She might. Emily asks what I looked liked when we were together. I say I looked the same. And she was attracted to you then. I kick at the anchor. I’m being defeated by rational thought. It doesn’t feel good.
My superpower is taking myself too seriously.
In our bubble I’m feeling shy about my body. Sophia tells me I’m silly. She slips my T-shirt over my head, pulls down my boxers, kisses me everywhere. She takes her time, her breath hot, lips wet. Finally, she drapes her hair over my hard-on, tickling, teasing, until I feel the warm envelope of her mouth wrap over the head. Still going slow, she pulls the hair from her face so I can watch. I feel her tongue trace the length of my cock, base to tip. See, she says, I love your body.
Emily says everyone has three versions of themselves. There’s the side we show to other people. She calls this our best self. Then there’s our inner child. That’s where all our joy and curiosity comes from. But the inner child is vulnerable to the third side, our bully. She says it’s the job of the best self to protect the child from the bully.
She says: What would you say if someone spoke about Jon like that.
I say: I’d tell them to fuck off.
She asks about the overdose, if it was accident or intention. Depends if I survive, I say. I laugh. It falls quiet. Just because it ended, Emily says, doesn’t mean it wasn’t good. I nod like I didn’t need to hear that. We were good. I say. I take a deep breath. Then suddenly we weren’t any more. She’s listening so intently it makes my voice wobble. Tears well in her eyes. We stay like that a moment. Then she looks at her watch. Our time is up. We say our goodbyes. She walks down the dock, disappears into a bank of fog. Hours are always doing that to you, ending.
You feel any better, Jon says. I untie the dock line, throw it into the boat. What is it about someone listening to you for an hour, I say. Jon pulls me aboard. Maybe it’s because you finally get to talk about yourself, he says. You never do that. I mouth the words fuck off and he laughs.
The fog lifts like a skirt, leaving us naked, exposed. The water looks black. Company, Jon says. I stand to see the riverbanks lined with memories. My wrongs. He’s with them. The guy with his face in perma-flux.
He raises his hand and the assembled army brace themselves for something. We flinch as he drops his arm. What they throw is words. Nobody likes you. You’re a terrible person. You don’t matter. Jon and I relax some. This isn’t so bad. Then the Many-Faced Man throws his head back, laughs. A booming laugh. They’re all laughing now. Doubled over, leaning on each other. Pointing at me. I’m shouting: Fuck off. Fuck off. Fuck off. Still they laugh. I can’t quiet them all.
I don’t know how to turn it off. Jon grabs me by both shoulders, tells me to ignore them. My face makes a half-grin grimace. The kind of expression I imagine looks like I forgot how to have a face. Come on, chief, I need your help inside. He pulls me into the cabin, bolts the door. Don’t worry, he says. I’ve got this. He throws the throttle forward. The pistons race from hum to growl.
And then, nothing. We’re not going any faster. Well shit, that was disappointing. He tells me to take the wheel. You got this, he says. You’re in control. I keep the nose of the boat pointed at the horizon, grip the wheel so tight the vibrations of the motor course through me like fury.
When I let myself look, the banks of the river are fir-lined, memory free. I’m about to thank Jon when the first stone sails through the window, narrowly missing my face. More rocks rain on the roof, leaving large dents, shattering the windows. We duck for cover. I preferred the laughter, I say. Something large, likely a rock, hits the console. The engine dies. Jon disagrees. You know what they say, he says. Sticks and stones will break your boat, but names will never leave you.
The stoning is blissfully finite. We start to drift downstream. I thank Jon for steering me through the storm. Hey, he says. I’m your Huckleberry.
I’m thirty-two, post bubble, handing over her things. I don’t have much. A pair of socks, some toiletries, couple of books. I could have met her somewhere, could have bagged it up, brought it all with me. I didn’t. I made her come to my flat. What I hoped would happen was she’d kiss me. One more time. With feeling. She doesn’t. What she does is takes her things and leaves.
Here’s what she said to me as she left: It never would have lasted.
My superpower is remembering.
Twelve
Iowa / Anger
The highway’s littered with abandoned cars left lying at odd angles. As if they’d swerved to a stop all at once. Some sit empty with doors open, others filled with things. Belongings, junk. Both. We check each for keys as we hike. It’s been an hour since we left the boat, an hour of hot road, heat stroke. Everything is tired feet and tension. It’s sunset on day two. We need a car.
I call out to Jon: You wanna explain this.
Nah, he says. What’s to explain.
Why are they running.
They’re scared.
Of what.
Of you.
I’m six, walking the dog in the woods with my nana and brother. We arrive at a white wall of fog. It cuts our path as far as we can see in either direction. Thick, sat flush against an invisible face. No glass, no screen. Smoke frozen solid. A barrier between here and beyond. The dog is barking. I want to touch it. Nana tells us to turn around and we leave.
I’m fifteen, watching an episode of The X-Files with my dad. Mum is in hospital for an operation on her back. The episode is about people being mutilated in a hospital ward. During an ad break he looks over to see that I’m sitting, petrified, tears in my eyes, and tells me not to worry about Mum. He says we should turn it off, watch something else. I’m okay, I say. Leave it on. I need to see Mulder and Scully save the day before I sleep.
The sun is falling, singeing the clouds. What’s happening, I say. Jon doesn’t answer right away. Short version or long version, he says. I don’t wait for his answer. I’m dying, aren’t I. He mumbles something about how we’re all dying. I tell him maybe we should have helped Sophia. Maybe you’re delirious, he says. I check a sun visor for keys, come up empty. What if it was the right thing to do. He wipes tired eyes. The right thing to do is to look after yourself. I slam a car door hard enough to shatter the window. What do you care, really, I say. He curses, kicks a Chevy. I’m just the guy who’s always been here, he says. The guy who isn’t trying to leave. You’re right, I don’t know shit. Like I don’t know you don’t listen to my music any more.
Jon’s flaw is he needs to be needed. His fear is irrelevance.
I say: She
has the key.
He says: You sure.
A ball of flame blazes overhead. A missile, a mortar. A meteor. It burns out, drops into a nearby lake bed. I look up to see more streaking through the sky, red clouds raining fire.
I saw one once, a meteorite. I was twenty-four. It was big, searing across the sky. A jet engine, free of its mooring, fast and wrapped in flame. It scorched the air for a few hundred yards above my house before I lost it behind a treeline. I asked around for days after, checked the news. Nothing. Later I realised what it was. What it must have been.
Is it still a shooting star if it falls to earth, or is it just a rock.
Remember to get the sound in your damn book. Somewhere in the dusk light a dog is barking. The horizon carries the high-pitched hum of a motorbike. Nearby, a car door slams. Closer still, my heart beating between my ears. Sound is very important.
On the wind a whisper: Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
It’s funny how you frame things when you don’t know the answers. When I was a teenager I’d get headaches, almost daily. My first thought was cancer. Second was meningitis. Something bad. It had to be. I stopped taking painkillers. I thought drugs would make the cancer-gitis worse. Or work to weaken my immune system.