From Away

by Phoef Sutton

  And Uncle Willie just faded away into nothing.

  So, I nodded to my mother, the woman who’d vanquished the Bogey Man while telling me he didn’t exist. You had to believe in a woman who could do that.

  And she came to me and sat on the edge of my bed and told me that things like this didn’t happen and the sooner I learned that the better. That seeing Bogey Men and monsters was stupid and silly and childish, and if I didn’t chase them off now they’d follow me everywhere. And the key to chasing them off was so simple, so simple. “Don’t believe in them. They can’t fight back if you don’t even see them. They don’t have the power to fight that.”

  I nodded again, half-scared, half-comforted, half-humiliated (I know, Maggie, there can’t be three halves of anything—that’s just an indication of how screwed up this left me). When she saw how frightened I still was, my mother gathered me up into her arms and told me her favorite bedtime story, because she wasn’t a cold person, or an unloving person. I never want you to think that. She told me that old Ogden Nash poem that always made me laugh.

  “Isabel met an enormous bear.

  Isabel, Isabel didn’t care;

  The bear was hungry, the bear was ravenous.

  The bear’s big mouth was cruel and cavernous.

  The bear said, ‘Isabel, glad to meet you.

  How do, Isabel, now I’ll eat you!’

  Isabel, Isabel didn’t worry.

  Isabel didn’t scream or scurry.

  She washed her hands and straightened her hair up, Then Isabel quietly ate the bear up.”

  The barn was cold. A spring from that cruel old horsehair sofa worked its way into the numb flesh of my ass, but I didn’t bother to shift position.

  “My poor mother,” I said, though I don’t know if I spoke aloud or if Mrs. Day could hear me or even if she was still in the room with me, I was so lost in the recoil of this realization. My mother was just like me. She could see Uncle Willie, too.

  I thought of all the years my mother must have spent fighting those spooks, pushing them back, blocking them out. No one knew better than I the price they made you pay for ignoring them. And then to have me come along, this last child, carrying the same gift, the same curse. What a nightmare I must have been to her. A squalling, whining confirmation of all that she’d been denying. A child who didn’t possess her strength—who couldn’t keep the spooks at bay.

  And yet she’d succeeded in teaching me to block them out. She’d trained me through all of those dark nights of terror and visitations to not believe, to never let the visitors in. To make me forget they ever were. To forget all too well, so that at thirteen, when my hormones kicked in and the spooks came back again, I’d forgotten all my defenses other than that of simple disbelief. And that wasn’t enough.

  Mom must have felt so betrayed that night when Charlotte told her about the séance. I could see her reaction now in a whole new light. In seeing the ghost of Melody’s father, I’d rejected her, rejected her teaching and cajoling, rejected those close nights of coaching and comforting, rejected the role model of Isabel. I had let the bear in instead of eating him up.

  I had become weak and foolish in her eyes. A drunkard back on the bottle. A masturbator caught with his meat in his hand. A worshiper of false idols kneeling before the Golden Calf. No wonder she’d found it so hard, impossible really, to forgive me. I had committed the sin she herself most feared committing.

  And even in death, I wondered with silent tears coursing down my cheeks, did she hold herself back? Did she hold my father back, did she hold George back from coming to me in that funeral home, from answering my pleas? Did she tell them they were foolish to answer me, since they didn’t exist? And they were stupid and silly and childish to think that they did.

  Mrs. Day sat still across the room from me, somehow seeming an impossible distance away. I wanted to talk to her and tell her what I’d been thinking and remembering, but it seemed too hard to make myself heard across that gulf. Was she moving at all? Was she breathing? Was she frozen in time? Or was it me?

  I lost sight of her as I thought again of my mother and felt a sudden rush of anger. Why all the effort? Why all those years of concentration and anger? Of pure focus and blind will? Why all that, when one damned moment of relaxation and acceptance, one smile of understanding, one whispered second of sharing the burden, of simply saying “It’s hard, isn’t it?” would have brought us together, would have given us rest, would have let us laugh together at the absurdity of our mutual struggle to deny the obvious?

  It would never happen, I thought, my anger dissolving into sadness. That one look of understanding would never be shared. Not unless all that bullshit Mrs. Day was spewing about the Other Side was true and our divine sparks were going to sit down for a beer at the Happy Hour After Death and mull over the whole sorry story. “Sorry about the misunderstanding,” Mom’s eternal spirit would say. “You were right and I was wrong. I didn’t have the courage to follow my path.”

  And would I be able to answer that I had?

  I opened my eyes again, ready to see any spook the world had to offer.

  At first, I thought there was one right in front of me, but it was only Mrs. Day again, still sitting, unmoving. But an odd, distorted Mrs. Day, who seemed to float, unconnected, above her surroundings as if she were a spook after all. I wanted to ask her why she looked that way, but I couldn’t even remember how to speak. I wanted to stand up, but that also seemed to be a forgotten skill.

  Flares of light were darting on the periphery of my vision—if I could have moved my head, I might have been able to focus on them and see what they were, but I needed someone to remind me how my spine and neck muscles worked. I could shift my eyes toward them, but the flares were too fast for me, flitting off like a fly evading a swatter.

  I breathed in deep, but it wasn’t air I sucked in. It was a miasma of emotions, a wild noise of them, like a thousand radio stations coming in on the same frequency. Grief. Anger. Hate. Resentment. Loneliness. Confusion. Envy. Jealousy. Sorrow. All swimming in a sea of regret. Whose emotions these were, I couldn’t say. Mine? Someone else’s? I wasn’t sure there was a difference either way.

  I opened my eyes wider, like I did when I was a kid lying on the grass of the Thorofare at night, trying to spot shooting stars. Charlotte and George would always see them, always in the part of the sky I wasn’t looking at. So, I’d open my eyes as wide as I could, trying to take in all the stars, the whole bowl of the night. It didn’t work then; it wasn’t working now.

  The lights flared again and vanished, and I was left alone. Frustrated. Receptive but not receiving. If this was something I was supposed to be able to do, why was I so damned bad at it? What sort of joke was this? What teasing God gives a man a gift but not the power to use it?

  These thoughts weren’t helping, of course. Whatever presence I had sensed a moment before had slipped away, leaving me wondering if I’d just imagined those lights, those emotions. I tried to bring back the sensations, but it was useless. This was like learning a golf swing or trying to get an erection after having too much to drink—the more you thought about it, the more elusive it became.

  I shut my eyes, ready to give up. Give up the ghost, I thought with an inward laugh. Opening my eyes again, I saw an indistinct world, as if I were looking through Vaseline-smeared contact lenses. The unpopulated room was now as full as a cocktail party, buzzing with conversation. But no, it wasn’t conversation; the voices, muddled and unclear, never connected or replied with one another. Each was a monologue on its own, as if this were a waiting room for a mass audition, crowded with actors rehearsing their speeches.

  The faces and forms were hazy but familiar—character actors I’d seen many times but couldn’t hang a name on. I found myself moving through them with no effort, nervous but happy, waiting to come up with a name, to say hello, to connect.

  I bumped into an old brass bed, big, broad, and tarnished. I was in a strange room now. A cramped, clut
tered room. Looking down, I saw a huge man, massively fat, grotesque. His body took up the entire bed, and the deep folds of his rolling flesh seeped with unhealthy moisture.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  He looked up at me with big, kind eyes, peering out from mounds of dough.

  “That’s okay,” he said.

  Now, where did I know him from? Had I seen him on a TV talk show? A movie? Had I known him, perhaps, in more slender days? For whatever reason, I felt totally at home with him. An old friend. I sat on what little edge of the bed I could find.

  “You know,” he said, “I don’t think I’m going to get up today. I mean, I’m fine right here. I have everything I need.”

  I smiled in happy recognition. It was the Krispy Kreme Donut Man himself. In the flesh. And so much of it.

  “When was the last time you did get up?” I asked.

  He frowned. “Now, don’t you start. That’s what Mom and Dad are always saying.”

  “What is?”

  “You know. Get up. Go out. Like it’s so great out there.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “Not for me, it isn’t. When you look like this, it’s just embarrassing.”

  “They’re probably just worried about your health.”

  “I know, I know.” He unwrapped his shirt, revealing pendulous man-breasts resting on rolls of fat. “My heart doesn’t sound so good. Want to listen?” He lifted up a huge pap; mushrooms were sprouting in the dark recesses of his flesh.

  I looked away, hiding my gag reflex. “No, thanks.”

  He rolled his eyes and wrapped the shirt over himself again. “It’s pretty gross, isn’t it?”

  “How’d you die?” I asked.

  “See, that’s a perfect example. It was so embarrassing. My heart starts to give out, so they call the doctor. I’m all passed out or something, and I can’t talk, but I can hear what they’re saying. The doctor, he says I need to go to the hospital. But I don’t fit through the door. So they have to take out the wall to my bedroom. And Dad’s, like, watching, and he’s so upset about that, like who’s going to pay for that? And they have to use this forklift thing to get me outside, and it’s so bright out there. And there are people, everywhere. Pointing and staring. And they’re laughing and talking, and they take, like, forever getting me into the ambulance. I was really fat and, man, if it had been a month earlier I was down ten pounds, not that that made any difference, but at least I didn’t look so…and my robe fell open and I heard everybody gasp and I said I was sorry. They got me in and the driver made a joke about the shock absorbers and the paramedics laughed and I…I just died. Before they even got me to the hospital. So, at least I didn’t have to be there when they took me out. Man, I don’t want to go through that again. I’d rather just stay here.”

  I took his huge, moist hand in mine. “You don’t have to, Paul.” I don’t know when I knew his name.

  “That’s good.”

  I knew what I had to do, but I had no idea how to start. I glanced back at Mrs. Day. She was all gauzy and transparent and far away. A ghost compared to Paul. No help there.

  “When you were dying, did you see any kind of bright light…or anything?” I asked.

  “Nope. I had my eyes shut.”

  “You didn’t hear a voice? Some old dead friend or relative? An angel?”

  “Nope.” He tilted his head to look at me. “You’re wondering why I didn’t cross over?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I can’t. Looking like this. Better just to stay here. I have everything I need.”

  “Paul. I really don’t think you’ll be fat on the Other Side.”

  “I’ve always been fat.”

  I nodded. “How’d you find me?”

  “You used to like to stay in your room. Even when you were a kid. I figured you’d understand.”

  “I do. But, you know, I go outside all the time.”

  “Come on, stop it, okay? I’m fine, really. I can read. I can watch TV. I can jerk off if Mom and Dad aren’t home. It’s fine.”

  I laid my head on the pillow next to his. “How long have you been in bed?”

  He frowned. “Not sure. I remember watching Nixon beat McGovern on TV.”

  “That’s an awfully long time, Paul.”

  “I know.” He let his head fall toward mine; his big yellow eyes were full of tears. “Would I really not be fat over there?”

  “I don’t think you’d have a body at all.”

  He gave a deep chuckle. “That’d be nice. But you don’t really know, do you? Not really.”

  “Not really, Paul.”

  “So, I think it’s safer here.”

  “Safe isn’t everything.”

  “If I go and I don’t like it, could I come back?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re as useless as I am.”

  “Of course. That’s why we’re friends.”

  We lay on the bed and chuckled, the easy laughter of old pals.

  “Maybe once I get there, I’ll come back and tell you what it’s like.”

  “I’d really appreciate that.”

  “I’m scared.”

  “It’s okay to be scared. But you’re a brave guy.”

  His eyes set with determination. “I am. I’ve always been brave. You have to be brave to wake up every morning.”

  “Go for it, Paul.”

  “I’ll see you over there.”

  “Yeah.”

  And he was gone.

  I lay on the suddenly empty bed, full of elation. Energy. My soul felt three hundred pounds lighter. He was gone from me. I’d miss him, it was true, but all the new room inside me felt luxurious. I bounced off the walls inside myself, glorying in the space.

  But it was more than being free from him. I’d found my calling. I was a composer sitting at the piano for the first time. An artist picking up his first brush. A writer sharpening his first pencil. If this was being special, for once it didn’t seem scary at all. It seemed invigorating. Validating. A reason for being.

  Of course, as soon as I felt all this, the warning voice sounded in my ear, bringing me down to earth. Telling me to be careful and not to get too excited. After all, I still didn’t know what I was doing. All sorts of things could go wrong. I shouldn’t get too full of myself.

  I turned and saw a middle-aged woman with a hatchet face at my side, continuing her monologue, telling me not to get my hopes up, that something was bound to go wrong, it always did.

  So, there she is, I thought, the face that goes with that voice.

  “Shut up,” I told her. She went silent, shocked, offended. “I’ll feel good if I want to,” I went on.

  “You’re just setting yourself up for disappointment,” she told me.

  “I’ll worry about that when it happens,” I said.

  “You’ll see. You’ll see I’m right.” She wandered away. I’d have to deal with her hatchet face later.

  I felt a stirring at my side, down low. I looked; nothing there.

  Then, I felt a little hand slip into mine.

  NINETEEN

  The little hand, as it touched me, was soft as a feather, smooth as cream, cold as seaweed. I saw her now, standing at my feet.

  “Hi,” Jellica said. Her short hair was wet and plastered to her face; her clothes were dripping a puddle onto the floor. I was in another room now. A barren room, painted all in black.

  “Hi,” I croaked, managing a feeble smile. The confidence and elation of moments before faded. This was the trouble that the middle-aged lady had been talking about. I hated that she’d been right.

  “You don’ like me, do you?” the little girl asked.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know you.”

  “I don’ like you.” Her face was stern and solemn. I figured she meant what she said.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’ like the way you play with Kat’leen.”

  “Kathleen’s my friend.”

  “I don’ think so.�
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  “Do you like Maggie?”

  “Maggie’s nice. She plays with me. She says I’m like Casper. You rumember Casper?”

  “Sure.”

  “He had a friend who was a fox in one of ’em. You rumember that one?”

  “I think so.”

  “I like that one.”

  She sat on the floor in front of me, her chubby legs folded underneath her. “Are you gonna keep playing with Kat’leen?”

  “It doesn’t look like it.”

  “You don’ like her?”

  “I like her very much. But I…don’t think she wants to play with me anymore.”

  “I don’ blame her. You were bad.”

  “When was I bad, Jellica?”

  “You did that thing. You touched her. Down there.”

  “You saw that?”

  “I see everything Kat’leen does. She’s my friend. She doesun’ like to play that game.”

  “Look, that’s a grown-up thing. It’s not something kids can understand.”

  “Mommy said that’s the worse sin ever. Even worse than me talking to the people in the dark.”

  “Your mother was wrong about that.”

  “Mommy was stupid. She said I musta done that with people in the dark and that’s how I got so bad. I woodun do that. It’s gross.”

  “You mother was confused about a lot of things.”

  “I hate her.”

  “I understand that. But you have to let it go, Jellica. You can’t keep hanging onto it.”

  “You made Kat’leen scream when you played that game.”

  “I know.”

  “That means she didun’ like it.”

  “Jellica, listen to me. You have to let all this go.” I faltered, not having a clue what to say next. “That lady over there,” I pointed to the phantom figure of Mrs. Day, “she explained it to me. You need to cross over. Then, you can start again, and maybe it’ll be better next time.”

  “You’re not makin’ any sense.”

  “I know. Jellica, you know you’re not alive anymore, don’t you?”

  “O’course! I said I was like Casper.”

  “Okay. Then, why are you still here?”