Halfway Down the Stairs

by Gary A Braunbeck

  “I don’t have the slightest goddamn idea what you’re talking about,” Lenny had said to me on his third night in my company. We were sitting at my kitchen table, putting a pretty good dent in a bottle of Glenlivet I’d bought earlier that day, knowing it was Lenny’s poison of choice.

  “Not all of your cells have died yet,” I said, only slightly slurring my words, “and the ones that’re still alive remember you. And as long as just one cell remembers, you’re tied to the corporeal—to the physical body—in some form. But when those final cells finally give it up—” I snapped my fingers as if I had actually made my point.

  “I’m guessing you weren’t a big church-goer,” said Lenny, tamping a smoke out the pack lying on the table and lighting up.

  I leaned back in my chair, grinning. “Okay, smartass, let me ask you something, then. How is it you’re still able to smoke a cigarette?”

  Lenny looked at the smoke he held between his fingers as if it were something he’d never seen before.

  “You don’t remember doing that, do you?”

  He shook his head.

  “That’s the answer—or at least part of it. There’s a thousand things we do every day without thinking—walking, eating, breathing, lighting a cigarette, picking up a pen, taking a piss. All done by rote. We explain it away by saying that we do it ‘unconsciously,’ but the truth is it’s our cells that remember this stuff for us, that tell the rest of our body how to lift a phone receiver or add a little more sugar to the iced tea because it’s not sweet enough. Don’t you get it, Lenny? You’re here with me because those cells in you that are still alive haven’t figured out yet that you’re gone.”

  “Horseshit. I bought the farm almost a month ago. You’re not really going to sit there and try to tell me that buried under the ground in Cedar Hill Cemetery there’s some part of my body that’s still alive on a cellular level, are you? I’m here, that’s that, and it don’t mean nothin’.”

  I was on my fourth drink—well past my limit of two—and feeling no pain. “You remember Medgar Evers?”

  “The Civil Rights leader from Mississippi? Betcher ass, I do! Helluva guy. Took ‘em thirty years, but they finally put that bastard Beckwith away for his assassination.”

  “Remember when they exhumed Evers’ body before Beckwith’s third trial in ’94? How there was almost no decomposition after thirty years in the ground?”

  “Yeah…?”

  “I saw this cable special one night where one of the medical examiners who studied Evers’ body was being interviewed, and he talked about how, on a routine examination of some tissue, he detected the smallest amount of cell activity. An embalmed body, thirty years in the ground, and there was still cell activity in the tissue. So don’t say ‘Horeshit’ to me, buddy.”

  He crushed out his smoke, poured himself another shot, and lit up a fresh cigarette. “It ain’t exactly like these can hurt me now, is it?”

  “Is that your way of saying that maybe, maybe I’m right?”

  “It’s my way of saying that maybe, maybe you’re not full of shit right up to the eyeballs, but that’s as far as I go. You know, you remind me of this chopper pilot I once caught a ride with from Two Corps in Pleiku. Son-of-a-bitch musta loved the sound of his own voice too because, man, he could go on and on about anything and most of what he talked about, he didn’t know jack, but did that stop him? Hell, no….”

  It was because of Lenny that I discovered they don’t sleep. I found out later that night when I heard him cry out from the small room that I laughingly call my office. I was still in the process of cataloguing the contents of his personal effects and had left the lid off the box. He wandered in there, saw his C-rations cup, and without thinking, picked it up.

  They can touch and hold those inanimate things that had meaning for them while they were alive, even if these objects weren’t among their final personal effects—a favorite book or magazine, a record or CD, a toy or knickknack, even, believe it or not, kitchen utensils and equipment. I once had a wonderful older lady—Grace (never was someone named more appropriately)—who all but danced a jig when she saw that I had an old-fashioned stand-mounted mixer, and insisted on baking cookies and a cake. Once she saw the mixer, everything in the kitchen took on meaning for her, and she puttered around in there for days. It was actually comforting, listening to her occupy herself; the clinking of dishes, the rattle of spoons, the sounds of the mixer working overtime…it reminded me of when I was a child, sitting in the living room at Christmastime listening to my mother work her magic over the holidays. Grace even hummed while she baked, an old lullaby that my mother used to sing to me when I was young:

  You can take the Toy-Town Trolley and meet the jolly Times Express,

  No one there is melancholy, it's an isle of happiness.

  Don't you keep your dreamboat waiting, hope you have a pleasant stay

  On Hush-a-bye Island on Rock-a-bye Bay….

  Yes, it’s corny as hell, but I don’t care (hey, Sinatra recorded it, so don’t get too high and mighty); it was nice, during Grace’s stay, to feel something of my mother close again.

  Lastly, here is what I hope: I hope…

  …ah, mmm, well…

  …on second thought, let’s skip that last one. I would have been pissing in the wind and praying for rain, anyway.

  * * *

  A photograph of Melissa, taken at her seventh birthday party, had been enlarged and set on an easel near the head of the closed casket. Even from the back of the crowded room, you could see her sweet, grinning face and know how much had been lost.

  There must have been at least seventy-five people there, possibly more. I was dressed in my best suit and trying to look like I was wearing it instead of the other way around as I walked up to the polished-wood podium holding the guest book and signed Lenny’s name.

  “That’s not very nice,” Missy whispered to me. “You really ought to sign your own name.”

  Looking up to make sure no one was watching me, I whispered as softly as I could, “We talked about this, Missy.”

  A sigh. “I know… ‘I can’t talk to you once we’re inside, Missy. People might think I’m ca-ra-zeeee.’ This sucks.” She looked toward the closed casket. “How come the lid’s shut like that? And—oh, God, I can’t believe she used that picture! I look like a pug!” She stared for a moment, touching her hospital robe, and then her trembling hand moved slowly toward her bandanna. “Do I look that awful?” The tears were evident in her voice before they appeared in her eyes. “I didn’t think I looked that ugly, not so ugly that Mommy wouldn’t…wouldn’t want people to see me!”

  I reached out to take hold of her hand but pulled back almost at once; I couldn’t chance another episode this soon.

  It had taken the better part of twenty minutes for the pain to subside as I lay on the floor of my living room, and true to her word, Missy never moved away from me the entire time. When I was at last able to speak in almost complete sentences, I asked her to go into the bathroom, get into the medicine cabinet above the sink, and bring me one of the boxes containing the pre-measured shot of Imitrex I took when a migraine hit—and make no mistake, once Missy’s pain had faded away, the full-blown migraine was there in all its shimmering, aura-soaked, drilling, nausea-inducing glory. I listened as Missy ran into the bathroom, threw open the cabinet door, and knocked over most of the contents within as she grabbed the Imitrex. I could hear her tearing open the box as she came back to the living room.

  “You sure you can hold this thing?” she asked. “You seem real shaky—here, I’ll do it.”

  “P-please don’t—”

  “Shut. Up. Dummy. I’m not gonna touch you. How do you—this doesn’t look like any needle I’ve seen. How’m I supposed to…?”

  I explained, not once having to repeat myself, and she administered the shot like a pro. It took about thirty seconds before it began its voodoo, and then I realized there was something I’d forgotten to tell her.

&nbs
p; “I am so ahead of you,” she said, setting the emptied waste-paper basket by my side as I struggled into a sitting position.

  “You might…might want to look away for this next part,” I said.

  She shrugged. “Don’t bother me to see somebody else puke.”

  I would have said something witty and Noel Coward-like in response, but by then my head was buried deep in the plastic basket and things were taking their natural course. If I don’t take the shot in time, if the migraine’s in full-tilt boogie mode by the time the medicine enters my system, I vomit. Unconditionally. Like this time; I wouldn’t have been surprised if I had seen my shoes land in there.

  Afterward, shoving the basket away, I fell back on the floor and lay there shuddering.

  “You’re all sweaty,” said Missy, picking up the basket and marching back into the bathroom. I heard her empty its contents into the toilet and then flush it away; after that, she rinsed it out in the bath tub, then did something else at the sink. A few seconds later she was kneeling beside me again and placing a warm, damp washcloth against my forehead. I began to protest but she cut me off.

  “I’m not touching you,” she said, applying the slightest pressure. “There’s a wet rag between us.”

  True enough. She kept her hand there, maintaining pressure, until the warmth began to sink into my flesh. She’d gotten the temperature exactly right, and I liked the feeling of her hand against my forehead.

  “You’re taking good care of me,” I said, managing to produce a second complete sentence in less than three minutes. Things were looking up.

  “Well, a lot of people took real good care of me, and I always paid real good attention, so I learned how to do it, too. Hey, maybe I could’ve been a nurse, huh?”

  “Florence Nightingale’s got nothing on you.”

  “I’ll bet you think I don’t get that, don’t you? Well, I do, I know all about Florence Nightingale from school, so there!”

  I laughed and it hurt. She laughed, as well.

  “Better yet?” she asked.

  “Yes, yes it is.”

  “If you wanna tell me where your suit is, I can go and lay it out for you. I used to lay out Mommy’s work clothes for her at night so they’d be all ready when she got up in the morning.”

  I opened my eyes, relieved to see that the shimmering aura surrounding her and everything else was nearly gone. “There’s a tan garment bag hanging on the left side of the closet in my bedroom.”

  “Your shoes in there, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “You picked out a tie yet? If you haven’t, can I pick it out for you?”

  “That would be very nice of you.”

  She stared at me a few moments longer. “Y’know, if I didn’t think it’d give you another bad fit, I’d kiss your cheek. You look like you could use a kiss on the cheek.”

  “I appreciate the thought, though.”

  “Yeah, well….” Then she did something marvelous; she removed her hand from the wash cloth, bent down, and pressed her lips against it, kissing my forehead through the still-damp cotton. “That worked okay, I guess.”

  “I liked it.”

  She shook her index finger at me. “Mommy warned me that’s what all dirty old men say before they start perving on you, so you just watch it, buddy.”

  “I’m not that old.”

  “No, but you do need a shower. Phew! Dude, you stink. Go deal with it.”

  Then she was off to lay out my suit and shoes, choose my tie (a silk number in a soft, muted shade of red), my socks (black), and wait for me to pull myself together and shower.

  Now, standing in the main viewing room at Criss Brothers Funeral Home, she was crying and feeling embarrassed and humiliated because she thought she looked so ugly at the end (which meant she thought she looked ugly now), and I’d just chickened out on taking hold of her hand and maybe, maybe helping her to feel a little bit better.

  I knelt down, acting as if I were re-tying one of my shoes. “Stop it, Missy.” My teeth were clenched together and I was trying not to move my lips, so it emerged sounding like stotitnissy.

  “I didn’t wanna be ugly. Oh, lookit Mommy! She’s so sad….” And the crying—which before had been only sniffles and a few cracked words accompanying stray tears—now threatened to erupt into body-wracking sobs. She was so scared and ashamed and confused, and me, I just knelt there, scolding her, useless, awkward, self-conscious, ineffectual, and inept, having just denied her the one gesture that might have told her was still beautiful, that no one was ashamed of her, she wasn’t repulsive and never had been—

  (“…I’m sorry that Rebecca killed herself…”)

  —no, I thought. It will not be this way, not within reach of my arm.

  Maybe if I’d been able to summon this kind of backbone sooner, Rebecca wouldn’t have…wouldn’t have.

  I reached out and took hold of Missy’s hand, prepared for the onslaught of sensations and memories I was sure were about to kick my ass into next week. That is when I discovered what happens if I mentally prepare myself for the consequences of touching them before doing so:

  I felt only the hand of a frightened little girl. Missy looked at me, tears streaming down her cheeks, and tried to say something, but all that emerged was a pained splutter of nonsensical sounds as she gave my hand a squeeze, let go, and threw her arms around my neck. “I’m n-n-not u-ugly, am I, Neal?”

  “No, honey, of course you’re not. Shhhh, there-there, c’mon, Missy.”

  An old woman seated in a chair near the back row heard me, and turned around to stare. Seeing that I was talking to myself, her eyes narrowed in disgust.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to her. “I just…I knew Missy and it’s just a terrible thing.” The emotion in my voice wasn’t as much of an affectation as I thought it would be.

  The old woman’s eyes softened and the slightest ghost of a smile crossed her face. She gave me a slight nod—Maybe the poor fellow’s really broken-up—and turned away, leaving this stranger to his grief.

  Missy pulled in a thick, snot-filled breath, and then laughed. “Boy, that was a close one. Don’t say anything, freakazoid, or somebody’ll call the nuthouse to come get you.” She gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and broke the embrace, wiping her eyes and nose on the sleeve of her gown. “I’m gonna go over and see Mommy, okay?”

  I gave a quick nod as I rose to my feet again. Missy didn’t cross the room, she simply did her imitation of an electron, bounding from point to point without traversing the space between. Her mother sat in a chair off to the side of the casket and photo display. Missy was now by her side, looking uncertain what to do.

  As soon as Missy appeared, the area she occupied, as if by silent understanding, became at once forbidden to anyone around her. Maybe people were just giving Missy’s mother a little space—God knew the woman looked exhausted from trying to put on a strong face as she listened to mourners tell her how sorry they were about her loss—but my guess was that Missy was unconsciously emitting some sort of energy that made others nearby sense a sudden otherness in the room, and it might be best to just keep their distance for a few minutes.

  I moved along the wall, trying to be as invisible as a living person could be, never taking my gaze off Missy and her mother. I caught a millisecond glimpse of the old woman who’d been staring at me: she was leaning over and whispering something to a well-dressed man who had just enough detached concern about him to be easily labeled an employee of the funeral home. I knew without actually looking that both the old woman and the man were talking about me.

  —Do you know him, ma’am?

  —Never saw him before today. I’m not sure, but I think he maybe ought to be watched. I think he’s really broken up, poor fellow—he was talking to himself. Not trying to start any trouble, you understand.

  —I do, ma’am, and I’ll keep an eye on him.

  Great. The last thing I needed was to have any attention drawn to me.

  Missy was rea
ching out to take hold of her mother’s hand. The funeral home employee was moving away from the old woman and making a beeline in my direction (I couldn’t get mad at the guy, he was just doing his job). I didn’t have many choices, and what few I did have were depleting fast.

  Moving away from the wall, I made my way through the clusters of people toward the casket. A prayer bench had been placed close to its side, and I knelt down, making the Sign of the Cross as I did so and then folding my hands, lowering my head. Even if the funeral home employee did think I was trouble, he wouldn’t dare interrupt me while I was praying—not that I was praying, but I knew damn well how this looked, and right now the appearance of prayer was good enough to buy me at least two minutes of safety.

  I did not close my eyes; instead, I began turning my head in small, slow degrees to so that I could see Missy and her mother, at least peripherally. At first all I managed to do was get the great-grandmother of all neck cramps, but as soon as I saw what was happening, the muscle strain seemed trivial.

  Missy was squeezing her mother’s hand. The woman’s head snapped up, her eyes widening as she gasped. Several people turned in her direction but no one approached.

  “Neal?” said Missy, not bothering to whisper because she knew I was the only one who could hear. “Please come over here. Please come right now.”