He can think of little else. Useless to try to sleep, he must do penance in the darkest hours of the night. Kneels on the filthy floor of the cell. As he has been instructed.
Flagellant is a word no one speaks aloud. Yet many are the flagellants seeking penance.
The children’s faces! Lucas, Esther. You tend to forget, a child’s face is small.
The heads of children are small. As fragile as eggshells. Their arms, legs are thin. As if their bones are composed of a material lighter than adult bones, easily snapped.
Lucas and Esther in their pajamas. Tenderly he lifts them from their beds. The shaking of his hands is steadied somewhat by the weight of the children; it is a good weight, like ballast.
Her fault, the woman’s fault, that his hands shake, for it is the woman’s fault that he can’t sleep, he must self-medicate, the pills leave him dazed and groggy, and the other pills spur his heart to palpitations, cause him to break into oozing, oily sweat. The woman has cast him from her life, she has made him an exile from his own household. Hadn’t he painted the interior of the little house, hadn’t he laid the linoleum tile, ash falling from a cigarette in his mouth. He’d stooped, strained his damned back. He’d done a damned good job. Kitchen floor, bathroom floor. He’d got the tiles at a discount and he’d laid them in and she’d said how beautiful they were, how she loved him for such care he’d taken with their home.
Tonight he lifts the children in his arms. Lucas first, then Esther. The little boy is three years old, the little girl is one year old. In that year, how much has happened! But he does not blame either of them, it is the mother he blames. Wrong for a mother to love her babies more than she loves their father.
Leaking milk through her clothes. Disgusted and excited him, the breast-milk smell that is like no other smell.
In his muscled arms he holds the children. He’s proud of his body, or was. Working out, lifting weights, no screwing around at the gym, guys he’d known from high school were impressed. And these kids he’d loved more than his own life.
Christ, he has come to hate his own life.
He’d hated the mother more than he’d loved the kids. He did not deny it. Jesus understood. You could not look fully into the face of Jesus for the powerful light in his face, but you knew that Jesus understood.
Driving the sleepy children. The little girl in the back, the little boy in the front seat. No child-seat shit. No time to take the child-seats from her car and into the pickup. Lucas could sit in the front seat like an adult. Esther was asleep anyway, let her lie down on the back seat. Lucas was saying Daddy where are we going?—worried and confused and not knowing if he liked it. Until Daddy put out his hand to thump the little shoulder to explain.
Anywhere you go with Daddy, you are meant to go.
Daddy will take care of you and your sister. Already Daddy is doing this.
Driving faster. The woman’s voice in his head, haranguing. Bitch nagging. Hail striking the windshield, pounding against his head.
Lucas is whimpering. Daddy! Daddy …
The skid. The truck goes into a skid on black ice. Slams into the guardrail, and the guardrail crumples like plastic. And now the truck has overturned, the children’s screams abruptly cease.
He is crawling out of the truck. All his strength is required. Yelling at the children—Come on! C’mon! Follow Daddy!
Yelling for them, but can’t get back into the fucking truck. Tries, but can’t get back. Tugs at the door handle. Thumps the (cracked) window with a fist. A part of him knows it is hopeless.
It’s over. No hope. You are fucked.
She’d been the one who’d wanted them. Sober, saying, Kids will change us, Earle. Wait and see. Give us something to live for, not just us.
She’d begged. She’d pleaded. Licking him up and down with her cool, wet tongue he would recall as hot, scalding.
Kids will be like Heaven to us, Earle. People like us, we won’t get into Heaven, they will shut the door on us. But we can peek inside and watch them, see? That’s the kids.
He’d never forgiven her for saying such things.
Like the two of them were not enough. The kind of feeling he had for her, which was unique in his life, like a river rushing through a desert, making the dead land come alive again—that meant nothing to her.
Calling after him. Stumbling in the dark. Half drunk, or high on pills. Lay down and couldn’t lift her head. Ten, twelve hours. Through the morning and into the afternoon and into early evening. How she’d self-medicate when a migraine came piercing her skull.
Saying, I can’t do it anymore, Earle. The way you look at me.
There’s no oxygen for me to breathe. It’s just—I tried—but …
The way he’d followed her around when he was supposed to be at work. Checked on her—if her car was parked in the driveway. Called her a dozen times a day on her cell phone. Calling their mutual friends. Guy she’d worked for, he’d suspected her of fucking before they were married and, more he thought about it, possibly after as well.
Sick, he’d felt. Fever in the blood. Infection like hepatitis C he couldn’t shake.
Yet incredulous, hearing the woman’s words, it was sounding like she’d prepared. Or someone had prepared for her. Asking her, what’re you saying? Because it had to be a joke. Hadn’t he just made a down payment on a Dodge SUV for her? Wanting to see her smile again. Smile at him. And the kids, taking pride in Daddy.
Driving them to school. Picking them up from school. Silver-green vehicle, classy. He’d gotten a bargain on it, pre-used, good as new, joked with the dealer he’d be making payments on it until he was fucking retired or dead.
Important to make the kids proud. Give them something to be proud of in their daddy.
And then, the woman undermining him. Betraying him. Injunction—that was what pushed him over the edge.
Forbidden to approach within one hundred yards of the house and forbidden to approach within one hundred yards of the children and forbidden to approach within one hundred yards of the woman who has requested the restraining order.
Wife, she was. Former wife, it would be written.
Daddy’s secret, he’d never wanted kids. Your kids judge you. Your kid are too close up. Then they outlive you. They cry because of you or they disappoint you. In the boy’s face a look like shrinking, drawing back from his dad, Christ!—all Earle could do to keep from grabbing the little bastard and shaking him so hard his brains rattled like marbles.
But no. No. He didn’t mean it, Christ.
How he’d leaned down and shouted into the kid’s (scared-white) face. Opening his mouth wide, feeling his face turn ugly, shouting. Don’t you try to get away from me, you little shit.
Hadn’t meant it. Any of it. Therapists sympathized. Everyone loses his temper. Parents lose their tempers. Nobody is perfect. A perfect dad does not exist.
Crucial to forgive yourself, the Catholic chaplain said. Between love and hate we may choose hate out of fear of choosing love.
Saying to him, how we don’t want forgiveness for our sins when it is our sins we love.
He’d come close to crying, being told such a thing. For it was true, it’s his sins he loves, nothing else has meaning to him.
No one but her. But fuck her.
Driving fast on Strouts Mill Road, and then faster. Eyes steady in their sockets. He was gripping the wheel correctly. He was gripping the wheel as you would grip it if it were alive and trying to get away from you.
He prayed with his eyes open. He had nothing to hide. His eyes took in all things. He did not spare himself. He’d loved his kids more than his own life, but he’d hated their mother more than he’d loved them or himself, and that was the truth he had to live with.
He was fearful of Jesus. The love in Jesus. The love of Jesus was a pool that could overflow and drown a man.
He could understand meanness. He could see why people were cruel to one another. But forgiveness and love he could not understand.
She’d told him he would have to leave. They would all be happier if he left, she said. He’d said, Happy! We are not on this goddamned earth to be happy.
He had not struck her. He had never struck her. Not head-on, not deliberately. He had struck the air beside her head. He had struck the wall, maimed the wall beside her head, but he had never struck her.
Better for us all if we end it now. You, and me, and them. Now.
Shrinking from him, recoiling from the fist swung in the air beside her head, the woman had lost her balance, stumbled and fell—how was that his fault? Not his fault. Everyone knew she was a drunk. Junkie. Gained weight since the first pregnancy, thick ankles, aching veins, none of it his fault. Not the good-looking girl he’d fallen in love with and married. She had tricked him. The children were not hers to take from him. He was praying with his eyes open. He prayed to them, Lucas and Esther who art in Heaven. Innocent children are in Heaven looking down upon the rest of us. Our earth is actually Hell—you look down upon it from Heaven. In a dream this came to him.
Holy Saturday is the day of liberation. Whipping his back raw with the clumsy rod he has fashioned. Blood streaming, itching, like ants streaming in open wounds.
Thank you, Jesus!—forgive me.
Another time it happens, skidding tires on black ice, the crash.
Another time, there is no way to stop it.
The truck is flung over like a child’s toy, tires spinning. Rolling downhill into the creek and into the litter sunk into the creek, and the children’s screams and his own screams mixed together in the stink of oil, gasoline, urine.
Another time, the screams, and then the silence.
Well—the children never stopped loving their Daddy, he is sure of that. They have never blamed him. They are in Heaven now and would not cast the first stone. No child would cast the first stone. The woman, she has cast the first stone. She has cast many stones. She will go to Hell. They will meet in Hell. They will clutch hands in Hell. They will throw their wounded bodies together in Hell. Their eyes will burn dry, sightless, in Hell. Their souls will shrivel like leaves in a pitiless sun, these leaves blown together across a broken pavement.
At the crossing-over time, such thoughts come to him. Between daytime and night.
For at this time he is not incarcerated in a filthy cell, but free to make his way along Strouts Mill Road. He is not driving the pickup. He is on his belly in the wet grass. He has eluded his captors, he is not what they think. The cunning of the snake, which has been the female cunning but has now become his.
Strength will come to him, the promise is he will soon stand upright, as a man is meant to stand.
Sure he’d heard the term lifer. Hadn’t known exactly what it meant until it was applied to him—in the way he wouldn’t have known what cancer meant exactly until it was applied to him.
Even then it wasn’t an exact knowledge. The charge had not been homicide, but manslaughter: vehicular manslaughter. Driving while impaired. Violation of a court-ordered injunction. Breaking and entering a residence. The bastards had tried to charge him with abduction of underage children as well, but that charge had been dropped.
To these he’d pleaded guilty. Not in his heart, but in the courtroom before the judge, who was gazing down upon him in scarcely concealed repugnance, as a man might gaze down upon a creature subhuman though standing upright.
Then his mouth twisted. Furious grin, baring ape teeth he’d liked to sink into the fucker’s neck.
And so he was given the sentence twenty-five years to life. Which meant you could not say I will be out of here in ___ years. You could not say This will end for me, I will be released in ___ years. None of this you could say with certainty. For even dignity is denied you in the orange jumpsuit with shackled legs.
He has not seen the young lawyer in a long time. Last time, their exchange had been brief and their consultation had ended abruptly.
Raising his voice, threatening the lawyer provided him by the court.
Fuck the lawyer, what the fuck did he need that asshole for. He did not need him or any lawyer.
Not probation this time, but incarceration. One of the other inmates explained to him that when he applied for parole, which would not be for many years, the ex-wife could exert her influence if she wished, for she would always be consulted as the ex-wife and the mother of the child-victims. If there had been threats to her, these would be duly recorded in the computer and never deleted.
He foresaw: always the woman would poison them against her.
In this way, always they would be married.
Problem is, remorse.
Heartily sorry for my sins. Now and at the hour of my death, Amen.
He did not lack remorse. But he did not exude a remorseful air.
And so, in the courtroom, this was perceived. The judge had perceived. Even the asshole lawyer had perceived. If it was remorse, it was remorse for not having taken the woman instead of the children and murdering the woman when he’d had the chance. The two of them together in the truck hurtling along Strouts Mill Road.
In her bed upstairs. In her bed that had been his bed. His bed from which she’d exiled him. In this way dooming him and the children, and he had not even known it at the time.
Waking in this squalid place and not knowing if the woman was still alive, and if he was still alive. Or if both of them were dead already.
You are forgiven for the harm you have done yourself. But for the harm you have done the others, you will never be forgiven. Know that, forever, you are of the damned.
In the words of Christ this was explained to him. Bloodied face and body of Christ and eyes resembling his own.
In Hell they are together. Grinding against each other’s bodies once so beautiful and now no longer but in their memories, in Hell their beautiful, smooth young bodies are restored to them. As in a dream in which the most intense yearning is suffused with cold, sick horror they are tearing at each other with their teeth, their bodies writhe together like the bodies of coiled snakes. Never will they come to the end of their desire for each other, never will they be freed of each other.
In this, there is a feeling beyond happiness. In this, there is the flagellant’s penance.
By now the flagellant has whipped his back raw. He is panting, exhausted.
Bliss of Holy Saturday. And the promise to him, it will never not be Holy Saturday.
VAPING: A USER’S MANUAL
Six-forty a.m., first vape of the day.
Jesus!—your heart just skids.
S-L-O-W helping your mom down the brick steps.
Hate the way her fingers clutch—Don’t let me go, Jacey …
Vaping makes it okay. Brain rush!
It’s okay, Mom. I’ve got you.
Weird how it’s still dark. Six fifty-five a.m. Like, you’d been awake all night. Mom in her room and you in yours. Eyeballs like sea anemones floating in the dark.
Mom coughing, choking, gasping for air, could hear through the walls.
Four a.m., brought her the asthma inhaler. Got her sitting up, pillows behind her back so she could sleep/try to sleep that way.
Attacks are getting worse. Since last April.
In the morning, helping Mom put on clothes. Stumbling one slender leg into the black suede trousers, then the other leg, Mom teetering, panicked, grabbing your arm. (Jesus!)
Even going to the Oncology Center your mother has got to look good. Has got to try. Closetful of clothes, some of them never worn, expensive. Also, high-heeled shoes.
But not today. Flat-heeled shoes today.
Next, the (hateful) walker. Foot of the stairs. Have to position it for Mom, she’s scared as hell trying to use it. Hey look, Mom, you can’t hang on to me. We’re both gonna fall.
Doesn’t trust the fucking
walker since the time she fell. Fell hard. Looked away from her for one minute out in the driveway, fuck she fell.
Okay, Mom, it’s steady.
Okay, Mom, you can let go of me.
Wouldn’t know that Mom used to be a beautiful woman. Just a few years ago.
Used to be chic, blond-streaked hair. Now white-streaked and thinning.
White of her eyes showing over the iris like a thin crescent moon.
(How old is Mom? Fuck, not old. Forty-three?)
Appointment is seven forty-five a.m., but we’re leaving early. In case something fucks up. As Dad says Always keep in mind the fuckup factor.
Last time you took Mom for her infusion, there was an accident on the turnpike—traffic backed up for miles. Oil in skid-streaks across the highway, gleaming like fresh blood.
The sky is lightening, like cracks in a black-rubble wall. Sun at the horizon like the damn city is on fire!
What vaping does to the brain: makes you see. All kinds of weird, beautiful shit you’d never see in your ordinary brain.
S-L-O-W driving to the Oncology Center. Three point seven miles to the Mercer Street exit. Already seven ten a.m., traffic backing up like a shit-blocked gut.
Mom sitting stiff beside me. Staring ahead. (Seeing—what? And what is she thinking?)
Before last April, Mom would be talking. You’re not even in the room, your mom is talking to you, casting her voice out like a spider’s thread—making sure you are there, you are connected. Kind of exasperating, expecting you to be listening and to reply, but now she’s silent, like her mouth has been sewn shut, you miss it.
And if you look at her, she won’t be smiling at you like she used to—might not even look at you at all. Panicky, staring inside herself.
Does divorce cause cancer?—or does the (undiagnosed) cancerous condition cause the divorce?
Night, Neon Page 17