Halfway Down the Stairs

by Gary A Braunbeck

  I crossed myself, rose, and with a left-right-left sidestepped the funeral home employee who’d been lurking in wait nearby.

  I approached Missy’s mother, who looked directly at me, smiled, and said, “Lenny! Oh, I’m so glad you could make it.”

  Missy gave me a quick glance, indicating that I needed to take hold of her mother’s other hand, which I did at once. Her skin was simultaneously sweaty yet cracked and calloused.

  “Lenny,” said her mother, gesturing with her head for me to lean down; instead, I got down on one knee. She moved her lips close—but not too close—to my ear. “I know how most people would take this, but I think you’ll understand…I…I feel her near me, right this second. It’s so wonderful. She’s fine. She feels fine. She isn’t suffering anymore.”

  I smiled and looked into her eyes; where before they had been red-rimmed and glossed with that heart-numbed luster from having shed too many tears, now their shine was one of utter bliss, of an inner-peace that transcended anything I had ever experienced, and if I’d fallen in love with Missy’s joy and innocence before, I felt an equal rush of emotion toward her mother. I had no idea what Missy was doing—or even how she was doing it—but it was obvious that this grief-stricken woman would end the day not with the same broken heart and spirit that had been her only interior companions since the death of her daughter, but with a sense of tranquility, even serenity, that would get her through this.

  Even now I cannot tell you what Missy’s mother (Cynthia) and I talked about; I had become, for lack of a more subtle simile, Missy’s ventriloquist’s dummy; she was filtering her feelings and memories and thoughts through her mother into me, compelling me to put those feelings and memories into my own words (more or less) so that, for the dozens of people who slowly and cautiously gathered to listen, it sounded as if Cynthia and I were old friends, sharing private moments and recollections about Missy. If there had been any doubt in anyone’s mind that I wasn’t a friend of the family, those doubts were erased over the next twenty minutes.

  When at last Cynthia noticed that we’d gathered an audience, she smiled, wiped her eyes, stood, and said: “Everyone, I’m sorry—this is Leonard Kessler. He was Melissa’s—Missy’s—kindergarten teacher.”

  Everyone—including the old woman who’d been watching me, and the funeral home employee—said hello and shook my hand and told me how wonderful it was that I’d come. I discovered, much to my surprise, that Missy had given me a cache of specific memories to share with each person, detailed memories exclusive to the individual with whom I spoke.

  Finally someone—possibly the minister—announced that the service would be starting in five minutes, and everyone should take their seats. I gave Cynthia a hug, she kissed my cheek, and I wandered (read: half-staggered) toward the back row where Missy stood waiting.

  Looking at her now, I realized that I knew her better than I’d known my own wife—hell, I knew her better than I knew myself; she might have filtered her feelings and memories through her mother in order not to chance another physical incident like the one earlier that morning, but it in no way lessened the way the information and sensations both effected and affected me.

  “Don’t you say a word,” she said to me. “I’ve decided I don’t want to stay for the service. I—oh, wait, hang on.” She made her way over to a well-dressed woman who’d just entered holding the hand of a slightly plump boy who was roughly Missy’s age. The little boy was practically sobbing. Missy walked up beside him, took hold of his free hand, and whispered something in his ear, then kissed his cheek.

  The kid looked as if he’d just shaken Spider-Man’s hand. His face beamed, and the tears just—viola!—stopped. He looked to his right, where Missy stood, and smiled. Missy smiled back, then returned to me.

  “That’s Eric, the guy who did the gross bug-thing,” she said. “I told him I wasn’t mad so he didn’t have to feel, y’know, all guilty and stuff. Then I told him he looked real handsome and gave him a kiss.” She looked up at me. “Some kids say he’s fat, but you know what I think? I think he’s gonna be a real strong football player someday with lots of fans and millions of dollars, and nobody’ll make fun of him anymore.” She studied him for a moment. “I’ll bet he grows up to look like a cross between Johnny Depp and George Clooney. He’ll be yummy.”

  I almost laughed, but she shot me a look that said, Don’t you dare, not in here, freakazoid, then said, “I learned that word from Mommy—she thought Lee Marvin was ‘yummy,’ so don’t look at me like that. I’m gonna touch you now, so get ready,” and grabbed my hand, dragging me toward the door.

  “I figured it out,” she said as we made our way out into the parking lot. “If one of us sort of…prepares…y’know, if we make ourselves ready for touching the other person, then we don’t gotta worry about sending you into fits like before.”

  “‘Fits’?” I said.

  “Well, that’s what it was, wasn’t it? All that shaking around and kicking your legs and gagging on the floor and puking in a wastebasket.” A shrug. “Looked like a fit to me.”

  “Missy, why don’t you want to stay for your funeral?”

  “I told Mommy everything she needs to know to feel better. The rest of its just going to be a bunch of boring prayers and people crying and it’ll be soooo depressing.” She stopped by the car, looked me straight in the eyes, and said: “And I changed my mind about one other thing. I want you to call me ‘Melissa’ from now on, okay?”

  “Absolutely. I think it’s prettier than ‘Missy,’ anyway. May I ask why?”

  Her eyes glistened ever so slightly, but she did not cry. “I never knew that it was my grandma’s middle name. Mommy wanted to name me after Grandma—I never met her, she died before I was born—but I…I gave her crap about it being such an old-lady sounding name. That’s what I said: ‘It sounds like an old lady’s name.’ I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “But your mom, she knows now, right?”

  Melissa nodded her head, firmly, once. “You. Bet. And she’s gonna feel better now. I mean, she’ll miss me—” She then posed like a classic movie star, one arm cocked so that the hand was behind her head, the other hand on her hip, legs crossed at the ankles, Carole Lombard hamming it up for the press before putting her handprints in cement in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. “—c’mon, look at me, who wouldn’t miss all this? But Mommy will be okay.” She put down her arms and looked at me. “So what about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “What’s gonna make you okay?”

  “This isn’t about me, Miss—uh, Melissa.”

  “It is if I say so—you said this day was my day, that we could do whatever I wanted, your rules, not mine, smarty-pants—and I want to know what I can do to make you feel okay.”

  I got into the car and clipped the Bluetooth cell phone receiver to my ear; it makes it look less weird when I’m talking to no one…well, no one that anyone else can see. Yes, it’s a waste of money, but it keeps me from landing in the bin.

  Melissa was already sitting on the passenger side, arms folded across her chest, glaring at me, impatient.

  “I asked you a question, Mr. Gloomy Gus.”

  “If I’m going to call you by your name, then you have to call me by mine. It’s only fair.”

  “Like your stupid one-week rule thing is fair? That kind of fair?”

  I stared at her. She stared at me.

  “I’d like to see you have fun,” I replied.

  “Huh?”

  “There’s a nice little playground not too far from here, Dell Memorial Park, you know it?”

  “No. Does it have a teeter-totter?”

  “Yes, and a Jungle Gym, and a slide, and a bunch of other stuff.”

  She waved the rest of it away. “Not interested in those other things. Give me a teeter-totter any day. Seriously, dude—uh, I mean, Neal.”

  I started the car. “Then to Dell Memorial Park it is. You going to meet me there?”

 
“Nah,” she said, settling back into the seat. “Think I’ll just catch a ride this time.”

  “Seatbelt,” I said.

  She stared at me. “Dude—I mean, Neal. Think about who you’re talking to. Seriously.”

  “Oh, yeah…right. Sorry. Never mind.”

  “Well, duh.”

  * * *

  There has always been something about playgrounds that strike me as simultaneously joyful yet also sad and eerie, despite however many children are running around, shrieking and squealing and laughing their heads off, having a high old time as loving parents sit on the benches off to the side, watching Jimmy or Suzy or Billy or Amy or (insert child’s name here) burn off some of that seemingly everlasting energy that could power a small Third-World nation were one to harness it properly. Despite the joy and enthusiasm and laughter, I always see playgrounds from a palimpsest sort of view; while everyone else looks at the children and the life and the brisk activity, I imagine I can see beneath the surface to where the other playground waits, the deserted one, the one that exists late at night when everyone has gone home; a silent, shadow-shrouded place of swings with no occupants moving almost imperceptibly back and forth with the evening breeze, empty teeter-totters that somehow still manage to squeak at the hinges, and metal slides that quietly rattle as something small but hard falls from a nearby tree and rolls down to the ground.

  Told you before, I am a walking circus of mirth.

  But this, what I was watching now, this would have given even the most steely-nerved person a case of the willies.

  Melissa was running all over the playground, hitting the teeter-totter, the Jungle Gym, the slide, the swings, all of it (despite her protestations that she didn’t care about the rest of the playground’s offerings), laughing her head off, having the grandest of all grand times, playing with at least five other children…none of whom I could see. I wondered how the scene looked to those people who drive by; the teeter-totter going up and down with no one on it, unoccupied swings moving back and forth, some of them snapping up fairly high…they must have thought they were imagining things.

  Watching Melissa play with the unseen children, hearing the chime of her laughter, seeing the happiness on her face and how she looked like such a normal, healthy, vibrant, living child, I don’t think I’ve ever felt so lonely.

  After a few more minutes, Melissa ran over to me, still giggling over something one of her playmates had just told her, stopped, caught her breath, and said: “This isn’t working, is it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You still look like a Gloomy Gus. The Gloomiest Gus.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I’m gonna hold your hand again, so get ready.”

  I prepared myself, and she did as she’d threatened.

  “You’re so sad,” she said.

  “I’m just tired, Melissa. That’s all.”

  “Huh-uh, buddy. Don’t lie to me.” A tear began forming in one of her eyes.

  “Oh, hey, Melissa,” I said, taking hold of her other hand. “Don’t you get upset, hon, okay? I just…get like this sometimes.”

  “You are like this a lot of the time. I can tell.”

  “It passes. You go back and play with your new friends, all right?”

  She shook her head, her eyes unblinking. “No. I wanna go for another ride, see if I can spot people you can’t.”

  “Whatever you want.”

  “What I want is not to be dead. What I want is for you to, I dunno, smile and mean it. It won’t break your face, y’know.”

  “Well, then, why don’t we go home—uh, go to the apartment and watch SpongeBob, then? I was promised miraculous buttered popcorn, as I recall.”

  “Oh, you’ll get the popcorn, and you’ll love it. Okay. Let me say good-bye and then we’ll go back.”

  “You could stay here and play with them a little longer, you know. I mean, it’s not like you have to ride back with me.”

  “You asked me not to do that popping in and out thing. It makes you nervous.”

  “Only if I’m not expecting it. This would be different.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You trying to get rid of me?”

  “Not at all. But you’re having so much fun and…and I’m not so much fun.”

  “Says you. Gloomy Gus.”

  “I think I preferred ‘freakazoid.’”

  She parted her hands in front of her. “I am fickle. And I am dead. So we do things my way. I’m gonna go say good-bye to the other kids, and then I want you to take me someplace before we go back to watch SpongeBob.”

  “Did anyone ever tell you that you were kind of bossy?”

  “Yes, but I never listened. Like now.” And with that, she ran off to have one more ride on the teeter-totter with her unseen friends, while I sat there trying to think of where she could possibly want me to take her.

  * * *

  “You’re not serious?”

  “Yep,” she said. “I wanna see where you keep the other peoples’ boxes.”

  We were driving around the downtown square where I suspected Melissa would be able to spot others like herself, but if she did, she said nothing.

  “Why would you want to see…I mean, there’s nothing to—”

  “I just think it would be interesting, that’s all.”

  I made sure to watch the tone of my voice. “Look, Melissa, I don’t go there unless I have to.”

  “Is that another one of your dumb rules?”

  “No. It’s just the truth.” I stopped for a red light near the Sparta and found myself remembering when Rebecca and I first began dating, how we’d always start our Friday nights out at the Sparta for the world’s best cheeseburgers. This was back when I was arrogant—or lazy—enough to believe that I knew her.

  “Hey,” said Melissa, pointing toward the traffic light. “Is there, like, a certain shade of green you’re waiting for?”

  “A—huh? Oh, right…thanks.” I pulled away, automatically heading toward the East Main Street Bridge that led into Coffin County.

  “How come you don’t go there unless you have to?”

  My grip tightened on the steering wheel. “It’s not exactly Disney World in there. It’s a big, cold, depressing room filled with metal shelves and boxes full of dead peoples’ personal effects—their stuff.”

  Melissa glared at me for a moment. “I remember what ‘personal effects’ are from when you told me before, so don’t explain it every time you say it. I’m not stupid.”

  “I didn’t mean to make it sound that way, I’m sorry.”

  She turned away from me for a few moments, waved at someone I could not see, smiled, then said: “Can you see that lady over there by that wall?”

  Without really being aware of it, I’d driven over the bridge and into Coffin County. We were once again stopped at a red light, right at the corner where the Great Fire of 1968 began when a local casket company went up and took every business in a 3-block radius with it. The area never recovered.

  There was an old but elegant-looking black woman standing in front of a brick wall. If I remembered correctly, this part of Coffin County—what used to be called ‘Old Towne East’—used to boast a lot of nightclubs, small museums, and specialty shops. I wondered which type of business that wall had belonged to, and what memories the old woman associated with it.

  “Yes, I see her.”

  She stood there with her arms spread apart, as if waiting for someone to embrace her. Her dress was a thing of tattered, faded elegance, and the gloves she wore looked…cheerless. That’s the only word I could think of.

  “What’s she doing?” asked Melissa.

  “I have no idea, hon. There are a lot of…lost people who live in this area.”

  As if to illustrate my point, a young but horribly disheveled man walked up to the old woman and began asking her, in a very loud voice, to cut something off of his face for him. After a few moments, the old woman smiled, patted his cheek as if he were nothing more
than an upset little boy, and gave him a dollar bill from her purse. She then turned back to the wall, her arms spread open for the embrace, while the young man looked at her, looked at the dollar bill, and shuffled quietly away.

  “You see him, too?” asked Melissa.

  “Yes.”

  She leaned toward me. “I don’t know why, but I got a feeling he might be the next person to come stay with you for a while.”

  “He’s just one of the…lost people here, Melissa, that’s all. Poor guy’s probably crazy or something, can’t afford his medications.”

  The light changed and I drove on.

  “Do you always do that?”

  I looked at her. “Do what?”

  She looked at the young man who was now stumbling around the corner, then shook her head. “Nothing. You’re just a lot nicer than you want me to think you are.”

  “No, I’m not. But thank you, anyway.”

  “Hey, I’m bossy, remember? If I say you’re nice, then you’re nice.”

  “But—”

  “Shut. Up.”

  We fell into a comfortable silence for the next few minutes, Melissa studying the streets and buildings (and ruins of buildings) with an intensity that you are genetically incapable of after the age of 9, and me simply repeating a route I could drive in my sleep.

  Cedar Hill Memorial Hospital, both of the city’s nursing homes, and the County Hospice Center form an almost perfect circle from my apartment; what makes the circle complete is stopping by the “Old Towne East Storage” before heading back home. While this fact has always been present in my mind, I don’t know that it ever really hit me as hard as it did as Melissa and I drove toward the OTES facility; for three years I had been driving and living in one ongoing circle; a moth around a light bulb, deciding whether or not to give into the temptation; a plane in a holding pattern, waiting for clearance to land; a humorless straight-man stuck in a revolving door in some silent 2-reeler from the 1920s, waiting for the punch line to the gag.

  I pulled up to the locked gates and dug my key-card from my wallet. I was just getting ready to swipe it when Melissa said: “You’d really do it, wouldn’t you?”