From Away

by Phoef Sutton

  “Are we all comfortable?”

  We were all comfortable.

  “Now, we’re all here for the same reason. We’re here to help Sam find out what’s going on in his heart. Some of us may think we know what that is,” she was looking at Joe and Shara as she said this. “Others may not be so sure,” this was directed at Kathleen. “It doesn’t matter what we believe right now. All that matters is that we want to help Sam. That we send out positive thoughts.”

  I flinched inwardly at the preciousness of the sentiment, but felt comforted by it all the same.

  Like a yoga teacher, she took us on a tour of our bodies, using her voice to help us relax every muscle, every joint. Our breathing slowed, calmed, deepened; the dragon’s smoke coming out of our nostrils took on a steady, even pace. She told us to let our brains relax and drop away from the top our heads and settle like a glop of Jell-O on the top our spines.

  She counted and told us to picture each number as a soft cushion, a velvet pillow, and to imagine ourselves falling deeper and deeper into softness. I rolled and dropped from one to ten, feeling like Mickey in The Night Kitchen descending into the warm batter.

  “Sam, there’s a part of your mind you’ve closed off. Separated from the rest. You’ve been afraid of that part of your mind. Ashamed of it. But now you don’t need to be. It’s just another part of you, and you know that. I want you to picture it as something cupped in your hand. Something fragile and delicate. Something that would never hurt you. Now, I want you to open those hands. I want you to let it out. To welcome it. Do you feel those hands opening, those hands in your mind?”

  My eyes were closed now and damned if I didn’t feel a sensation of opening, as if a distance had suddenly appeared before me. And with it came that dizzying sensation of losing touch with ground that you get when you’re drifting off to sleep, when you’re halfway into a dream.

  I didn’t jerk myself awake or pull back. I let myself soar through the space behind my eyes.

  “Sam, can you still hear me?”

  I nodded, even though her voice sounded farther off.

  “There are no barriers now, Sam. You have brought down the walls. You are complete now. This is what you’ve been running from. This is who you are.”

  I felt exhilarated. Swooping like a firefly. Doing giddy pirouettes in my own head, just like you were doing in the backyard as you watched your kites fly away.

  “Are you alone, Sam?”

  My kite started to fall.

  “Is there someone with you?”

  Damn it. I was becoming aware of my own breathing, of the hard seat under my butt.

  “Try not to resist. There is someone there, but it isn’t a stranger. This is someone you’ve known for a long time.”

  I tried to feel the enormity of space again, to lift myself from the ground.

  “This is a friend. Someone who has been trying to talk to you for a long time. Someone who has been talking. But you haven’t been listening.”

  I tried, but only felt myself trying.

  “That person is with you. Let them be with you.”

  There. I felt the ground release its hold. I felt myself lifting in my mind, I heard Mrs. Day’s voice growing fainter, felt the great emptiness around me again.

  “It’s someone who only wishes you well. Who only wishes to help you. Let this person come to you, Sam. And through this person, let the others come to you. All those ones who have been clamoring to speak. Feel their loneliness and their love, Sam.”

  Again, I felt freedom. The pressure of the barrier I’d held up for so long was gone. Come to me, I said to whoever might be there. I am ready for you now. Walk out of the shadows and show your face. Where are you? I twirled and twisted and looked into every corner of myself with no sense of apprehension.

  And I was totally alone.

  My mind was clear and open and receptive.

  And there was no one on the line.

  “Is she there, Sam?”

  But I could barely hear her. There was too much joy rushing through my head, like blood pumping in my ears. I was alone. There was no one here but me.

  The rushing in my head turned to laughter. Laughter at my own foolishness, at my wasted effort, at years spent barring the door when there was no one knocking. I know nothing when I see it, and I was surrounded by a wonderful, comforting sea of nothing.

  I leapt back to consciousness, bounding up the velvet numbers again, like a child jumping from bed to bed.

  I opened my eyes and saw them staring at me. That’s when I realized I’d been laughing out loud.

  “You were wrong, Emily,” I said, smiling broadly. All those muscles she’d relaxed with her soothing words were still relaxed, and I was sure they’d stay relaxed for the rest of my life since the knot of tension I’d carried my whole life was gone, evaporated, proven false. “I’m not special after all.”

  FIFTEEN

  I don’t know if you can imagine what it’s like—no, I’m afraid you can—to feel all your life that you are different, set apart, that your experiences are unshareable. But then to suddenly have that weight lifted from your heart, to feel connected to the wonderful, dull, ordinary normalness of life. It’s like a stay of execution from the governor. Like having the doctor call and tell you there’s been a mix-up at the lab and you don’t have HIV after all, it’s just the flu.

  I walked out of that place with my heart still light and flying, still feeling that wonderful openness in my mind, knowing that there was no reason to clamp it shut again.

  There was no Bogey Man in my closet after all.

  (I know what you’re thinking, Maggie. What was it about this one incident that made me so sure I was normal after a lifetime of conspicuous weirdness? I guess it’s a thing called hope. There’s nothing more persuasive than the sound of what you want to hear.)

  Joe and Shara were palpably disappointed, but I was too ecstatic to care that I’d let them down. They’d have to find some other freak show to watch.

  Kathleen, on the other hand, seemed every bit as happy as I was. She’d come here out of curiosity, out of a determination to find the truth, and she was thrilled to find that the truth was this simple, that the man she liked (and I don’t think I’m fooling myself there) was normal after all. That no spirit was haunting her after all.

  Yes, yes, I know, there were a million unanswered questions to spoil our mood of mutual contentment. But we were too damned relieved to think of them just then.

  Mrs. Day did her best to bring me back down to earth. This was just a beginning, she said. After a lifetime of blocking myself off, I shouldn’t expect the doors to open all at once. Just because you don’t hear a ring, that doesn’t mean the phone isn’t there.

  I didn’t listen. I figured, yes, well, blah, blah, she has to justify herself, she can’t admit there’s nothing to all this. So, I thanked her nicely, probably not nicely enough, and said I hoped I’d see her around.

  She said I would.

  Kathleen and I decided to walk back to Joe’s house to get my Mustang. Neither of us wanted be cooped up in a car with Joe and Shara, hearing whatever platitudes and justifications they’d come up with. I wanted to walk through the cold night air, looking at the stars, looking at the moon shadows and knowing for damn well certain they were nothing but shadows.

  We walked together, not holding hands, but moving in step, laughing together, weaving in drunken, happy zigzags, like two people leaving a really wonderful party.

  “You know what I think,” she said, babbling happily, “I bet I did say Jellica’s name when you fell off the boat.”

  “That’s the only explanation.”

  “Let’s face it, she’s on my mind. I think I’m running away, but you can’t really run away from stuff like that.”

  “I bet you did say it.”

  “And so your niece drew a picture that looked like Jellica’s picture? Kids draw pictures all the time.”

  “They do! And so she has an imaginar
y playmate? All kids have imaginary playmates.”

  “They do!”

  She stopped, her smile fading to a look of blissful relief. “God, I was scared. Not for me, but for her. For Jellica.”

  I took her hand. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. You showed me I’m not over her. I needed to know that. Thank you.”

  “Thank you.”

  I could have kissed her then. She would have welcomed it. In the time it took me to realize it, the moment was gone. We walked on, holding hands, and I told myself the moment would come again.

  But you saw that child, a voice said in the back of my newly opened mind. You didn’t just hear her name; you saw that little girl standing on the deck of the boat. Shut up, I told my mind, that means nothing. I’d just almost drowned, for Christ’s sake, my mind wasn’t all there. Your mind wasn’t all there, so you saw a hallucination of a child from Kathleen’s past? I don’t care if it makes sense. I’m happy, so shut your trap.

  Before my mood was totally shattered and all the old tensions started creeping into my muscles, I heard Kathleen say a quiet, “Oh shit.”

  She was looking up the road. A cop’s patrol car was pulled up, slantwise, at the curb, and two people were standing in the front lawn of the Neesons’ house.

  “Goddamn it, Cheryl, you know you don’t want to do that.”

  I recognized the reedy, ineffectual tones of Deputy Beirko and made his figure out in the glow of the porch lamp. He was keeping a good two yards away from Cheryl Neeson. Cheryl, a muscular woman who ran the duckpin bowling alley with her husband, Jay, was standing astride a big dark, worm-like object on the ground and holding a golf club over her head.

  “You are so wrong about that.” She swung the club (I don’t know golf; I’ll call it a nine iron) down onto the worm-thing on the ground between her legs with a dull thud. The worm squirmed and gave out a litany of muffled, indecipherable cries.

  “Goddamn it, Cheryl, don’t make me pull my gun out on you.”

  Cheryl brayed. “I’d love to see that! I’d love to see you pull out your gun, Donny Beirko!”

  The worm-thing sat up, and I recognized it as a human figure, wrapped burrito-style in a woolen blanket.

  “Listen to the man, Cheryl!” the blanket said.

  Cheryl swung the club again and the worm-thing hit the ground, moaning.

  With clumsy haste, Deputy Beirko unsnapped his holster and yanked out his gun. “Goddamn it, Cheryl, now, I warned you!”

  Cheryl stepped forward and swung again (beautiful form, she had) and clipped the black gun right out of Beirko’s hand. The policeman scrambled for it on the dark lawn.

  “Goddamn it, Cheryl, you are fucking assaulting a fucking officer in the fucking line of fucking duty!”

  Kathleen plucked the gun up off the grass. “This what you’re looking for, Donny?”

  “Whoozat?” asked the blanket.

  The golf club swung down again, this time on the blanket’s midriff. It ‘oof’ed and rolled backward.

  “Sweet swing you got there, Cheryl,” Kathleen said, very casual.

  “Who the hell are you?” Cheryl’s tone was challenging, but she stayed behind the blanket, using it as both shield and victim.

  I wanted to pull her back, but Kathleen moved forward, holding the gun loosely in her limp hand. “I’m Kathleen Milland.”

  “Are you that whore from away?”

  Kathleen just laughed. “Don’t call somebody a whore when they’re holding a gun on you, Cheryl.”

  The blanket spoke up again. “Does the whole fucking town have to be here for this?”

  Once again, Cheryl swung, once, twice, and the blanket dropped and was quiet.

  “That’s one way to keep a man quiet, Cheryl,” Kathleen said.

  “The only fucking way with him.”

  Deputy Beirko tried to regain a place in the conversation. “Gimme my gun, Kate, I’m handling this.”

  Cheryl brayed again; I’d moved closer myself, and now I could see how drunk she was. “Yeah, you’re handling it! You like how he’s handling it, Jay?” She nudged the blanket with her foot, and it moaned once.

  Now that it was still, I could see the rough stitching on the blanket; someone was sewn up in it, like a caterpillar in a cocoon.

  Kathleen didn’t give Beirko the gun. “Just a minute, Donny.”

  Cheryl grinned. “She doesn’t trust you, Donny.”

  “Is that Jay in there?” Kathleen asked. “How you doing, Jay?”

  “Not so good,” said the man in the blanket.

  Cheryl gave him a little shove with her foot—she was gentler when she wasn’t using the club. “That one of your friends, Jay?” She looked up at Kathleen now, weaving a little as she stood. “You’re one of his AA friends, aren’t you?”

  “We go to meetings,” Kathleen said.

  “Listen to Miss Prissy! ‘We go to meetings.’ He spends all his time at those fucking meetings! I wanna know what goes on there. Do all the guys drink beer and play cards and then you start pulling a train, is that what’s so fucking great about it!?” Another club swing down on Jay; another gasp, softer now and woozier.

  Deputy Beirko was furious. “Goddamn it, Cheryl you are under a-fucking-rrest!”

  She leapt over the cocoon and took a vicious swing at Beirko. He backed off, tripped over a stump and sprawled on the ground. She turned on Kathleen next, who held the gun in the open palm of her hand.

  “We just talk, Cheryl,” Kathleen said. “It’s just a bunch of old drunks sitting around and talking.”

  She stumbled back to her husband, stepping on him, accidentally, I think. “I don’t feel so good, baby,” the blanket said.

  “Why’s Jay in the blanket, Cheryl?” Kathleen asked.

  “He wouldn’t talk to me! He come home late, like he always does nowadays, but I waited up. I wanted to talk. But he wouldn’t talk. He wouldn’t listen! He’s too fucking good for that. He just rolls over and goes to sleep. So, I folded him up like a fucking pig in a fucking blanket, which is what he is! And I sewed him up and dragged him out here, and now he’s listening! Aincha listening, Jay!?” She poked him with the club, but he made no answer.

  “He is listening,” Kathleen said, “so why don’t you tell him? Tell him what you want him to hear.”

  Cheryl looked at her, slack-jawed and mistrustful. “What do you care?”

  “I’m just saying, you went through all this trouble. Say what you have to say.”

  She leaned on the golf club and looked down at her husband. “You awake, Jay?”

  Jay groaned.

  Her hair hung lank in her face and her skin started turning red in the moonlight. “What the fuck’s the matter with you, Jay?!” There was a sob in her voice. “You got no time for me! It’s like all of a sudden you’re too fucking good for me. Too fucking superior for fat old Cheryl. Well, fuck that!” She was weeping now, speaking in short, breathless gasps. “You won’t even drink with me anymore.”

  The club dropped from her hand, and in a graceful move Kathleen snatched it before it hit the ground and tossed it off into the darkness.

  Cheryl twisted upright, back to her old fury, ready to spring at Kathleen. But Beirko was on her from behind, twisting her arms back.

  “Donny, let her go,” Kathleen yelled, over Cheryl’s mad howls of protest.

  In all the noise, I don’t know how I heard it; the grotesque strained retching sound from within the blanket.

  “Shut up!” I hollered at the top of my lungs. “Shut up, everybody!”

  The three of them turned to me, shocked; I don’t think Cheryl or Beirko even realized I was there till then.

  “I think he’s sick.”

  The coughing, choking sounds from the blanket were loud and clear now. Kathleen was down next to him in a heartbeat. “Get him out of this, he’s going to choke on his own puke.”

  Suddenly, Cheryl was on her knees, tugging at the seams she’d made, trying to pry them loose. “Jesus
, Jay! Hold on, Jay!” The sound from the blanket was the liquid gurgling of someone drowning.

  Cheryl was keening about how sorry she was, and Kathleen was yelling for a knife, and Deputy Beirko was standing there staring. I sprinted up the porch and into the house, found the kitchen (a wretched pile of dirty dishes and spoiled food), and yanked open drawers until I found a big carving knife.

  I flew out the door onto the lawn and skidded over the grass, passing the knife to Kathleen. She split the seam open and Jay Neeson burst out, spewing vomit.

  We carried him into the house, Cheryl hanging onto his hand or his arm or his leg or whatever she could grab, sobbing and bleating for forgiveness.

  A half hour later she was sitting solemn over a mug of coffee while her husband took the longest shower I ever heard and Beirko and Kathleen argued in the hall.

  “Why shouldn’t I arrest the bitch? She almost killed him.”

  “And she knows that, Donny. Give her time to think it over. Do a follow-up in a couple of days.”

  We hadn’t noticed the shower stopping, so we were surprised to see Jay standing next to us, toweling his hair.

  “You wanna press charges, Jay?” Beirko asked.

  He just shook his head. There was a cartoon lump on his forehead and a bursting black mouse swelling under his right eye. I’d helped him undress so I knew that the damage under his bathrobe was even worse. “Jesus, Donny, I don’t want everybody to know about this.”

  I only knew Jay to say hello to (we’d played together some as kids), but I felt I ought to offer. “You want to stay at my house?”

  Again he shook his head, this time looking into the kitchen. “Naw, I don’t want to leave her alone.”

  Cheryl Neeson stared at her coffee, silent, sullen. Once she’d realized her husband wasn’t going to die, she’d fallen into a mute funk.

  Jay went in and sat with her. We took that as our exit cue. Saying goodnight and thanks for everything didn’t seem appropriate, so we just eased our way out.

  I was the last one out, so I heard Jay tell Cheryl that if she was so nervous about the AA meetings, maybe she ought to go to one, just to see what it’s like.