A Girl Named X.
Jon Thorpe
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 by Jon Thorpe
CHAPTER ONE
“It feels like the world is coming to an end, doesn’t it?” my mother asked in a voice that was dead and could almost not be heard by those of us in the hotel room.
My father refused to look. He did not want to look. Instead he kept his gaze fixed on the small park that could just be viewed through the window. He later told me all he wanted to watch in that moment was a mother sitting on a bench with her daughter. He watched as the mother pulled out a small tin of food and began to feed crackers to her child. The mother uttered a few words and, in return, the daughter smiled, laughed, and then clapped her hands.
“I just wanted to remind myself that there could also be good things in this world,” he confessed in one of those last days before I lost him forever. “And I also wanted to hold on to one fleeting, final glimpse of innocence.”
“How can you ignore this?” my mother asked and her voice was no longer dead. She gestured frantically at the television and the image of the burning towers. “How in the world can you choose to look away?”
My father let out a small sigh. He turned and allowed his eyes to chance a brief, fleeting glance at the terrifying images flickering on the television screen.
“I think I need to step outside,” my father said softly.
“And I need you here,” my mother responded.
“And I will be here, just not in this moment,” my father replied and he picked up his suit jacket with one finger from where he had placed it on the bed. He held it up in front of him, squinted slightly, cocked his head to the left, and then removed an invisible speck of lint from the jacket’s right shoulder.
“Please stay,” my mother said with a small flash of anger but my father chose to ignore her. I looked up at him and watched as he ground his jaws together, as he did his best to try to pretend, in the moment, that my mother did not exist and that the surreal quality of the destruction being manifested before the collective gaze of the entire world was nothing more than the figment of some perverse, remote, and dark imagination.
“Well, this vacation’s certainly off to a fine start,” my father muttered and he placed one hand on the top of his still unopened suitcase and knocked twice. “Yes, this is all off to quite a fine start. I’ll be back in a few minutes. I just need a few moments to collect my thoughts.”
My father left the hotel room and my mother chose to let him go. And after a few moments my mother climbed up onto the bed with me and reached out and pulled me too close. I looked at the television and tried to understand the relationship between what I was witnessing and the magnitude of the fear my mother was experiencing.
“It’s only a movie, isn’t it?” I asked. “This isn’t real. Is it?”
“My God, my God,” my mother mumbled as we watched a human shadow climb to the window in an effort to escape the flames and smoke. The shadow paused, reflected, looked down, and then released itself into the air.
“My God,” my mother said and she covered my eyes for a moment with her hand. “It feels like the world is coming to an end, doesn’t it?” she whispered and she kissed the top of my head and I knew she was crying.
“I don’t know,” I answered. “I don’t know what the end of the world is supposed to feel like.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m just horrible for making you watch this,” my mother cried. “But this is the way of the world X.,” my mother said as she gestured towards the television. “Underneath it all, this is just the way of the world and there’s no point trying to hide any of this from you.”
We were in London I think.
Or maybe it was Paris.
Yes, it was Paris.
I remember the days following.
The beautiful days.
The crispness in the air.
Meals possessed no flavor.
The difficulty in returning home.
I remember sitting on the steps of the white church on top of Montmartre and looking down over the city.
My father sat next to me and smoked a cigarette.
My mother took a few steps back and snapped a photograph of us.
I still have that photograph.
My father looks handsome, but he is not looking at the camera.
I am smiling, and the more I look at the photograph, the more I realize how genuinely unhappy and disoriented I was in that moment.
I was five.
No, maybe I was six.
A few moments after my mother took the photograph we would walk down the hill, away from the tourists, and my parents would buy me a chocolate crepe.
My parents were still alive then.
CHAPTER TWO
Back home.
I was eight?
Yes, I was eight.
Indian summer.
Balmy.
My father stood on the balcony.
He smoked a cigarette.
“You need to quit,” I told him.
“I know,” he answered.
“It’s going to kill you. You’ll get cancer. Cancer’s not a good way to die.”
“I know.”
“Or you’ll end up with one of those holes in your throat. You won’t be able to talk.”
“I know.”
“Why don’t you quit smoking?”
“Because I can’t.”
“But it’s going to kill you.”
“I know,” and he looked at me and smiled the smile that used to make me believe that nothing could ever really hurt him, that death could not touch him, that he was invincible.
“But you know what X.?” my father asked.
“What?”
“You know what’s definitely going to happen, even if I quit smoking? Even if I make this my last cigarette?”
“No, what’s going to happen?”
“I’m still going to die.”
“But that’s different.”
“How’s that different X.?”
“I know you’re going to die.”
“Everything dies.”
“Everything dies,” I agreed.
“Everybody dies.”
“Yes, everybody dies,” I agreed.
“So explain to me why smoking’s bad if I’m going to die anyway?”
“There’s a difference between dying and killing yourself,” I answered. “I don’t want you to die, but I know it’s going to happen, eventually. But when you die, I want it to be because you got old, not because you did something to yourself that caused your own death.”
“You’re right,” he said. “You’re absolutely right. There is a real difference. There’s a definite difference X.”
But even though he agreed with me that afternoon, he never quit smoking.
I don’t think he actually ever tried to quit.
My father walked to the balcony’s edge and looked out over the city and let out a laugh.
“You know what X.?” he asked and there was happiness in his voice.
“What?” I answered.
“It’s just a damn perfect day!” he shouted with enthusiasm and he stamped the cigarette into the ashtray. “It’s just an absolutely superb and perfect day. A miracle day. It couldn’t get any better than this, you know that? Are you ready to go?”
“I’m ready.”
“Get your mitt.”
And then we were gone.
And home was replaced by thousands of voices shouting, cursing, insulting, a din punctured by moments of elation, moments of anger, and moments of despair.
We sat down third-base line, behind the dugout, about six rows up.
My father sipped from a plastic cup filled with beer.
At my feet was an open sack of kettle corn and a cup of lemonade.
In the bottom of the fourth inning we stood and cheered when the ball cleared the wall in right-center and three runs scored and my father picked me up and gave me a squeeze and a kiss on the cheek.
At the end of the top of the eighth inning we rose to our feet once again as the starter left the mound and walked towards the dugout. In the top of the eighth he had put two on with one out and was visited by the manager and this visit had all of us glancing nervously at the bullpen. However, after a few words were exchanged at the mound the manager returned to the dugout and the starter remained. A weak ground ball to second set in motion a 4-6-3 double play and we all rose as one and when he doffed his cap we roared.
The end, however, was miserable.
The starter did not return for the ninth.
But we had a two-run lead.
Our closer took the mound and promptly walked the first batter. He followed up the walk by giving up a single. A double down the right field line scored both runners. The closer then struck out the next batter before giving up a two-run homer and in the end it turned into a laugher, an absolute laugher.
Our team was in contention that year, fighting for the wild-card spot, but this game would be a turning point, and as the season wore down, our team just seemed to disappear, to vanish, and soon the starting lineup was filled with young men from the minor leagues.
“But that’s just how it goes sometimes,” my father said as we sat at a sidewalk table and ate an early dinner following the game. “You can never really predict how things will end. A narrative appears to be headed in one direction, the conclusion appears to have been written well in advance, but then, suddenly, nothing makes sense, the conclusion is so far away from what was expected and there is confusion until you take a step back, take in a deep breath, and survey the entirety of the proceedings.”
“What happens then when you do that?” I asked.
“Well then, you realize that what transpired, what occurred, is completely sensible, at least when your emotions have been pushed aside.”
My father let out a sigh.
The server placed our food in front of us.
We began to eat.
“Why didn’t we let our starter come back in the ninth?” I asked.
“Well, if the closer had done his job,” my father answered, “if he had made simple work of the other team, this conversation would not be occurring. The system would have worked. When a system works, we don’t ever really stop to question why it’s in place as long as it’s producing desired results. It’s only when the system breaks down, like all systems inevitably do from time to time that we get angry, that we lash out.”
And my father paused and took a sip from his glass of wine.
“Now, let’s stop for a moment, and consider the manager’s decision,” he continued. “Today the system failed, but on the whole it works far more often than not. How many saves does our closer have this season, do you know?”
“Maybe thirty?”
“He’s saved forty games this season. Not bad. Now, how many blown saves?”
“I don’t know.”
“Five, which isn’t all that great, but you still have to admit the system, at least from the manager’s perspective, is generally safe and entails little risk. In fact, the system works so often that the manager can almost absolve himself of any blame or responsibility when it doesn’t work. And it’s because the system works so often and with such predictability that when it fails, such as it did today, the failure is magnified and it’s only then that we end up questioning why the system is in place.”
We finished our dinners.
We walked to the subway station.
“Just give me a second,” my father said and he took a few steps away from me and lit a cigarette. He leaned against a mailbox. He finished his cigarette and we descended into the subway station.
We caught our train and found two seats together.
My father looked at me and smiled.
The train crossed the river.
“X.?” he asked.
“Yes?”
“There’s going to be a few changes,” he said softly.
“Changes?”
“Yeah.”
“What kind of changes?”
“Some pretty big changes. I’m going away.”
“You’re going away? Where?”
“Far.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s important.”
“Are you and mom getting a divorce?”
“No.”
“Are you getting a separation?”
“Not really. But we’ll be apart.”
“I don’t want to talk about this right now.”
“Okay.”
The train slipped back underground.
I felt a ball of fear form in the pit of my stomach.
My father put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me close.
And that was one of the most miserable days I had experienced up to that point in my short life.
CHAPTER THREE
“I’m sorry, but the decision has been made,” my father said sternly to my mother as they sat across from one another at our white tulip dining table.
I was in my room listening to their argument, my knees curled up tight into my chin.
I rocked back and forth.
Their voices became louder and more agitated.
I tried to turn myself into the tiniest ball possible.
I wanted to become so small.
I wanted to disappear completely.
I wanted to force myself out of existence.
“You’re abandoning your family,” my mother said sharply.
“I’m not abandoning my family,” my father responded. “I’m protecting my family. I’m protecting everything I love, everything I believe in, everything I hold dear.”
My mother’s fist slammed into the table.
“This is not the way to protect your family!” my mother screamed.
“Please calm down.”
“I will not calm down! Not now! Not when the stakes are this high!”
“Let’s be rational about this.”
“Rational? Rational? Damn you! Are you telling me to be rational? Let me tell you something, let me advise you on something that seems to be slipping past your mind at this moment, and what is it, what’s slipping past your mind? Well here it is: I am the one being rational! How can you not see that? You’re the one who’s being emotional! You’re the one basing a decision on nothing more than a knee-jerk reaction! Go on, show off your manhood, prove to yourself that you’re a real man! What a way to go off and have your mid-life crisis!”
“It’s nothing like that. You’re misinterpreting what this is all about.”
“Misinterpreting? Let me tell you something, you’re the one engaged in boatloads of misinterpretation! It’s a sham! The entire thing is a sham! And the worst part about all of this is is that you know it’s a sham!” my mother shouted and then she paused and the tone of her voice changed to resignation. “You know it’s just a sham, the whole thing is just a big lie, and what do you do? You choose to believe the lie. You’ve accepted the big lie. What you’re about to do, what you’re about to do to me, to X., to this family, is predicated on nothing but lies.”
“I don’t care.”
“Then you’re an idiot if you don’t care. You’re a sociopath if you don’t care.”
“This is bigger than any single individual lie.”
“What sort of statement is that? How can you willingly become part of something that has been constructed out of the ether, that’s a fantasy, a pipe dream? Right now you should be asking yourself the hard questions. What is this all about? What does this have to do with finding those who attacked this country? Why are we getting sidetracked in such a manner? These are the questions you should be asking yourself! Hell, you should be protesting out in the streets, not enlisting in the effort! What the hell has happened to your sense of analytical reasoning?”
A long pause before my father answered.
“Once in a while, you have to put those questions aside, put notions of reason and logic aside and focus, instead, on the larger picture. Sometimes the larger picture is more significant than the individual components, no matter how weak, or how flawed, that have constructed it.”
“And what is this this larger picture? Paint me this picture. Make this all comprehensible.”
“Remember when it happened? Remember that afternoon in Paris? Remember how you said you thought the world was coming to an end? Didn’t you mean those things you were saying that day, or now because time has passed have those feelings become forgotten? Has the fear faded? Do feel secure once again? Do you believe that it can’t happen, that lightning can’t strike twice? Well if you believe that, you’re fooling yourself. We are not safe.”
“Don’t try to obscure the issue. You’re not answering my questions. Your little adventure has nothing to do with making us safer. You’re tilting at windmills.”
“It doesn’t matter,” and a tone of anger I had never heard before sat at the bottom of my father’s voice. “There is no point discussing this with you. If you can’t see what I see, then there will never be any sort of consensus between us. We’re operating in two very different, parallel realities.”
I heard a chair push away from the table.
“And I’m not obscuring anything,” my father said, the tone of anger fading. “I just want you and X. to be safe. I don’t want anything like what happened to happen again. If I can help make this world more sensible, more predictable, if I can just do something so that everything I care about and love can be more secure, more safe, well, then I’m going to do it. I know you don’t believe me, but I’m doing this because I love you. I’m doing this because I love X.”
“But why you, why be a martyr?” my mother asked and her voice sounded so far away.
“I’m not a martyr. I’m just an ordinary human being like everyone else. I live an ordinary life. I do ordinary things. I’m not special.”
“You are special to us.”
“I’m just sick of how we continue to expect someone else, always someone else, to make the sacrifice to protect our ordinary lives. At some point we have to understand that all of us should be required to make a sacrifice for the common good.”
“I don’t know who you are right now. Suddenly you’re a patriot. You’re a full-fledge, card-carrying, flag-waving patriot. You’ve become nothing less than a scoundrel.”
“I’m not a patriot. This has nothing to do with patriotism.”
“No good’s going to come out of this. I feel it. This is all wrong, just tremendously wrong. Nothing positive can come out of an action predicated upon such a flawed premise.”
“Something positive can come out of this. The world can be changed into a better place.”
“Not this way. Not through violence. Not through a war of choice. Nothing is necessitating what we’re doing now.”
“Sometimes our capacity for good can be surprising.”
“So can our capacity for evil.”
A long silence broken by my mother.
“If you’re going to do this then I want a divorce,” my mother said and her voice was firm and then she tried to follow up but her voice broke and she began to cry.
And then I actually began to grow very small.
I shrunk.
I became a single, solitary point.
And then I was not even that.
I disappeared from the here and now.
CHAPTER FOUR
“How did you ever find this place?” the voice asked.
“I just wanted to disappear,” I answered, “and then I was gone, and then I was here.”
“Well it is surprising to see you. We certainly weren’t expecting you.”
“It’s a surprise to me as well.”
“Do you know how long you’ve been here?’
I shook my head.
“I have no idea,” I answered and then I thought about the question. “It’s weird. It feels like there’s no time in this place.”
“You’re just not attuned to it, that’s all.”
“I guess not.”
“Do you have any idea whether it’s been one second, one minute, one hour, one day, one year, one decade, one century, one millennium, or one eon?”
I closed my eyes.
I tried to gain an understanding of time in this place.
Time was something I had always taken for granted, time was something always around me, something I always felt, and now, and now its presence was gone.
“You don’t know, do you?” the voice asked. “You don’t know how long it’s really been.”
I shook my head.
I opened my eyes.
“I think I’ve been here for maybe one century?” I asked in answer. “Maybe longer?”
“You think you’ve been here for one century? Are you just guessing? You’re just guessing, aren’t you?”
I nodded.
“Well, I’m sorry to tell you this, but you need to go back,” the voice said. “As much as we want you here, as delighted as we are to see you, you’re still a bit raw and need to take on a little more seasoning. You’re not ready yet.”
“But I don’t want to go back. Not right now.”
“Look around X., what do you see?”
I turned and surveyed the world around me.
“I see nothing,” I answered. “I see nothing at all. There’s nothing here. Nothing except darkness.”
“And?”
“Well, and me of course.”
“And?”
“And you.”
“X.?”
“Yes?”
“Go home now.”
“I don’t want to go home.”
“You need to go home.”
“I would like to stay here. At least for a little bit longer. It’s better here.”
“Better than what? You have no clue. You have no basis for comparison. As you stated, there’s nothing here.”
“Well, in my case, nothing is better than something.”
“But that’s not true. And there is something here, you’re just not ready to be subjected to it yet. You’re looking right at it but you don’t see it. You’re still incubating in the womb.”
“That’s fine. It’s nice and warm in here. I’ll pretend that I can see everything and construct that reality in my mind.”
“Why would you want that? Why do that? That would be believing in illusion over truth.”
“If it’s what I believe, and I accept it as truth, then it’s not an illusion.”
“You don’t want to believe in an illusion.”
“That’s a lie. I want that. I want illusions. And how can you know what I want?”
“Okay X., then I’ll play along. Close your eyes and let’s pretend the lie is truth.”
“No.”
“Then I’ll close them for you.”
And my eyes closed.
“The lie is the truth,” the voice said.
“The lie is the truth,” I repeated in my mind.
“Now open your eyes X.,” the voice said. “Voila.”
And when my eyes opened it was night and I was standing on top of my balcony’s concrete railing. I stared straight down fifteen stories into the sidewalk.
There was no one about.
No people.
No cars.
No noise.
“Take a step back,” the voice said and it startled me and I was momentarily scared that I was about to fall forward but I held my ground and did not move.
I took in a deep breath.
I looked into the building across from me.
Every light was off.
I looked left.
I looked down.
I looked up.
I looked right.
No lights in the windows of any building.
Not a single streetlamp was illuminated.
“Take a step forward,” the voice said, “and let’s be done with it all right now.”
“I don’t think so,” I replied.
“Why not? It will take all your pain away.”
“I think I’m getting down now.”
“Good girl.”
I crouched slowly and extended my right leg backward and descended to the stability of the balcony.
“Why is the world an empty place?” I asked.
“It’s all coming back to normal,” the voice said. “It’ll all be back. The problem is, you just haven’t completely returned all the way yet. It’s usually like this the first time. It can be a little disorienting.”
“How long before everything returns?”
“Not long.”
“Why would you tell me to step forward?”
“Because maybe that’s what you really wanted to do.”
“I thought you cared about me.”
“Are you sure?”
“No.”
“I do care about you.”
“You wanted me to fall to my death.”
“Maybe I was just testing your faith.”
I noticed a light flash on in the tavern in the ground floor of the building directly across the street.
I left my apartment and called the elevator and it came.
I descended to the first floor.
I exited my building and crossed the street and entered the tavern.
The tavern was empty aside from the bartender.
He was polishing glasses.
He smiled when he saw me pass through the revolving door.
“Hello X.!” he exclaimed cheerfully.
I stopped.
“And why are you here?” I asked sharply. “Why do you get to exist?”
“And why do you exist?” the bartender answered in question.
I had no immediate answer.
“How long before everyone else returns?” I asked.
“Look X., the voice explained it to you, everyone else is back. They’re all around you. They never went anywhere. It’s just you that isn’t quite all the way back yet. It’s not a simple thing to disappear from the here and now. It takes time for everything to get readjusted, to get reoriented around you. This isn’t odd. It will get easier and easier each time you go away and return.”
The bartender slapped his palm onto the bar.
“So, take a seat up here X. and keep me company,” he said happily and I did what I was told and took a seat at the bar. The bartender prepared me a Shirley Temple with two maraschino cherries. I took a sip and it was delicious.
“Why are you here?” I asked again, this time with a less accusatory tone in my voice.
The bartender rubbed his chin as he pondered my question.
“To keep you company I suppose,” he finally answered. “I’m a very good conversationalist. It’s one of the necessary skills of my occupation. I guess I’m here to talk to you, to keep you occupied until everything is reoriented. It’s not such a nice thing to be left alone. How’s that for an answer?”
“It’s okay. I accept it.”
“Are you hungry? Would you like some peanuts?”
“Sure.”
He filled a small red bowl with honey-roasted peanuts and slid it in front of me.
“And what would you like to talk about?” the bartender asked. “I’m game for any subject. I heard you like baseball. Do you want to talk about baseball?”
I took a peanut and slipped it into my mouth. I chomped down and the nut broke and then it was as if the peanut dissolved into a thick syrup containing such a concentration of penetrating flavors that I was overwhelmed and felt all the blood stream to my head.
I grew faint.
The bartender reached across the bar and put a steadying hand on my shoulder.
“Whoa, watch it X., it’s not supposed to be a communion wafer,” he said with laughter in his voice. “You’ve got to be careful with those things. They’re a little bit different from what you’re used to, especially when you’re phasing between the two worlds. Things aren’t quite normal right now, especially the things that seem like they should be normal.”
I nodded.
The here and now was spinning.
And then everything stabilized.
The bartender pulled the bowl of peanuts away from me.
“Let’s just give it all a little time,” he said, “and then we’ll try again. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“So what would you like to talk about?” he asked as I leaned forward and took a sip from my drink.
“How I can get my father to quit smoking?” I asked.
The bartender laughed.
“That’s never going to happen,” the bartender answered.
“Why not?”
“Because he’s addicted, and he loves his addiction, and he has no desire to quit.”
“Even though he knows it’s going to kill him?”
“It’s not going to kill him X. Believe you me, smoking is not going to be the thing that kills him.”
“It’s not?”
“I know for certain that it’s not.”
“That’s good to know. So what’s going to kill him then?”
The bartender shook his head and an uncertain smile crossed his face.
“I’m not sure, but something else, hopefully old age, yeah, maybe old age. But the butts aren’t going to have anything to do with it. However, let’s change the subject. Talking about your father’s death is a little bit too morbid for my taste. So anything else you want to talk about?”
I shook my head.
“I guess I want to talk about nothing at all,” I answered.
“So be it. Let’s talk about nothing at all then.”
“Okay.”
And the bartender and I talked about nothing at all for what seemed like hours, and as we spoke I gradually returned to the here and now.
“There she is!” I heard my mother scream with a combination of relief and anger in her voice. “Oh my God! There she is!”
I looked up.
Everything was warm.
I heard the sounds of birds.
I saw the sun directly overhead and it burned my eyes.
I looked back down.
My feet were bare and dirty.
I was sitting on a park bench.
I was wearing my pajamas.
My throat was dry.
I coughed.
I felt my father pick me up.
He repeated my name over and over to himself.
“Don’t leave me,” I said softly and I heard him start to cry.
“I’m never going to leave you,” my father lied but I think he probably meant it at the time.
CHAPTER FIVE
“I’ll be safe,” my father said more than once as we drove to the airport.
My mother drove. She said nothing.
She never looked at my father.
I looked out the window.
I saw the massive fields of red, green, blue, orange, and yellow cargo containers come into view.
I saw the giant dinosaur cranes hunched on the horizon.
And the large ships that snuggled up next to them.
“I don’t think you’ll be coming back,” I said and I saw my mother’s eyes glance at me in the rearview mirror.
“Why say such a thing?” my father asked. “Of course I’ll be coming back.”
“Because it’s what I feel is true,” I answered. “Because it’s what I believe. You’re going over there and you’re never coming back. This will be the last time that I see you.”
“Don’t be so fatalistic X, it’s unbecoming.”
“I’m not being fatalistic. The truth is not fatalistic.”
“Well don’t feel that. It’s not the truth. Try to believe in something else. I’m not going over there to do any fighting. I’m not going to be firing a gun at anyone. That’s not what I’m going over there to do.”
“Then what are you going over there to do?”
“We’ve talked about this X. We’ve talked about this before.”
“I know. We’ve talked about it a bunch of times.”
“The why do you keep making me tell you the same thing over and over? You’re not a little kid anymore. You can understand what I’m telling you.”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“I don’t know,” I answered. “Maybe it’s because I want to make sure that what you’re telling me is always the same and that your story’s not going to change.”
My father sighed.
“And maybe I still am a little kid,” I added, “and you’re not willing to accept that.”
“Okay X.,” he said. “Here’s what I’m not going to be doing when I go over there. I’m not going over there to fight. We know that. I’ve been clear on that. That’s not what I’m good at. In fact I’d be God awful at that. I’m going over there because of what I carry around in my brain. You know what I do for a living, you know what my skills are.”
“You’re a lawyer.”
“Yes, I’m a lawyer. I’m a very good lawyer, an excellent lawyer. And because I’m a very good lawyer I’ve helped give us a good life, right? A nice, comfortable, ordinary, good life.”
“Maybe. I suppose that’s the case.”
“And so, with all these skills I have, all these intellectual skills, instead of just using them for me, for you, for your mother, or for rich people willing to pay a lot for my services, I want to take some time to help other people, people that are struggling, people that have been living under tyranny and domination, and I want to give them a little bit of what we have so that they may also lead ordinary lives, or at least have the opportunity to lead ordinary lives.”
“And what is it that we have that you’ll be giving them?”
“Freedom.”
“Okay. That’s good.”
“And justice. You can’t have freedom without justice.”
“Okay.”
“Justice is the primary reason I’m going.”
“Okay.”
“Dammit, you asked me to tell you X., and I’m telling you now. Don’t brush me off. Do you know why justice is important X.?”
“I really don’t care right now. I’m sorry I asked.”
“Okay. Let’s drop it then.”
“No, you can keep talking.”
Our car slowed and the traffic came to a crawl.
“Well,” my father continued with little enthusiasm, “where I’m heading right now they have no system of justice. Everything, the laws, the rules, they’re all being made up by us, on the fly really. We need to establish something solid over there, we need to create a system that’s fair, a system that the people can have faith in. We have to give the people something tangible, something that they can hold on to, something that will last and endure.”
“And you’re going to make that system? You’re going to create it?”
My father nodded.
“That’s my hope,” he said, “and if we can create something that works, if we can make a system that’s fair, then that’s good for us, and that’s good for them. It will make us all safer. Maybe other people will look at the system that we create, they’ll see that it works, and maybe they’ll want to create their own better systems of justice, and maybe they won’t look at us as being such bad guys.”
“So, you’re doing this to make us safer?”
“That’s right. I want to make you safer and I want to make the world safer.”
“And you want me to be happy.”
“You can’t be happy in a dangerous world,” my father replied.
“And we live in a dangerous world?”
“We do.”
“So no one can be happy? No one is ever actually happy?”
“That’s not quite what I mean.”
And the conversation came to an end.
We arrived at the airport.
My mother popped the trunk. My father pulled out his suitcase and set it curbside before he opened the rear passenger door. He reached in and hugged me and kissed me on top of my head.
“I love you X.,” he said and I sensed sadness and regret in his voice.
He shut my door and looked at my mother through the driver side window. She rolled the window down. She did not look at him.
“I still can’t believe you’re doing this,” she said and her voice seethed. “I can’t believe you’re going ahead with this after you saw how it affected her.”
“The doctor said. . . .”
“I could care less what the doctor said,” my mother interrupted and she rolled up the window.
My father walked to the curb.
Our car pulled away.
“Mom?” I asked but my mother did not answer.
I looked up and saw her reflection in the rearview mirror.
Tears welled in her eyes.
She sniffled and wiped her nose.
I turned around in my seat and caught a glimpse of my father.
He stood at the curb and smoked a cigarette.
The car arced left towards the freeway and the last thing I saw of my father was the image of him flicking the butt of his cigarette into the street and then, just like that, he was gone.
CHAPTER SIX
The news of my father’s death officially arrived precisely one week before Christmas. My father was to return for a week starting on December 26 and things had changed quite a bit at home with his absence.
Things became very quiet in our apartment.
Many things that I used to love just stopped being important.
When fall came and the baseball playoffs started I did not care for the first time I could remember.
My schoolwork suffered, and my mother just shrugged her shoulders and said to work harder, but she never really pressed me much on the issue.
My mother threw herself into her academic work.
I spent time with her on campus, even on school days. She would write me sick notes.
I would sit on the couch in her office and read science-fiction novels.
Her office was crammed with books and research and papers to be graded. The room lacked any of the organization that she regularly applied to our domestic life.
Her teaching load was light that semester. She was trying to finish her book on Ronald Reagan. She had been working on the book for years, but she told me that finally, finally, the end was in sight.
She took me to a Cold War conference in Galveston, Texas.
We stayed in a large, grand hotel with a beautiful view of the Gulf of Mexico.
Even though it was autumn, the world outside of the hotel languished with crushing humidity.
I preferred to spend most of my time in our air conditioned room.
I watched television and my mother sat on the bed and went over her notes.
I flipped through the channels and stopped on CNN. They were reporting an increase in the use of improvised explosive devices by insurgents who were now beginning to take the war directly to the Americans.
“Could you please turn that off?” my mother asked. “Turn it off or change the channel.”
“Okay.”
I let the television settle on Tom and Jerry cartoons. Tom had placed Jerry between two pieces of white bread and was about to consume the little brown mouse when, suddenly, a large bulldog kicked down the kitchen door and smashed Tom over the head with a cast-iron frying pan. I chuckled as the exaggerated bump, orbited by little, singing bluebirds, sprouted out of Tom’s head.
I turned off the television and went to the window. The gulf looked calm and inviting.
“Mom?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Dad’s going to be okay, right?”
My mother looked up from her notes.
“Your father’s not out in the city very much,” she said. “He’s safe for the most part. He’s secure.”
“For the most part?”
“He does most of his work in the Green Zone.”
“What’s the Green Zone?”
“It’s a safe place. It’s where people like your dad work. It’s a city within the city, surrounded by thick, concrete walls. It’s where the most important Americans live.”
“And dad’s important?”
“Yes, he’s important.”
“How can we be sure he’s safe in the Green Zone?”
“How can we be sure any of us are safe regardless of where we are?” My mother paused a long moment before continuing. “Like I said X., there’s miles of concrete blast walls. There are guards making sure only authorized people are allowed to enter. There are tanks and machine guns at all the gates to protect them. Really, when you think about it, you’re probably safer inside the Green Zone than you are in a lot of American cities.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Mom?”
“Yes X.?”
“How come we don’t talk to dad much anymore?”
“He’s very busy.”
“But he used to call. He used to want to talk with me all the time. Now he just sends me emails.”
“He’s trying to create a very complicated system. It takes a lot of his time.”
“Is he starting to forget about me?”
My mother smiled a small smile. She shook her head.
“There’s no way your father has forgotten about you,” she said and her voice was honest and put me at ease. “Believe you me X., you’re the apple of his eye. It may be hard for you to understand, it’s hard for me to understand most of the time, but you need to know that what your father is doing right now is all about how much he loves you. It may seem to make no sense, but it does. He’s trying to protect you. By going away, he’s trying to make you safer.”
“And you?”
My mother nodded.
“And me,” she answered.
“Mom?”
“X., I’m trying to get the presentation ready. I don’t have much time.”
“Sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry. What were you going to ask?”
“Are you ever going to love Dad again?
“X.”
“You don’t love dad anymore, do you?”
My mother ran her hand through her hair.
She turned her eyes away from me and stared into the black and white photograph of the seawall that hung on the room’s white wall.
She stood and went to the bathroom. She closed the door and I heard the lock click.
I was expecting her to start crying.
She cried so easily now.
I did not expect the silence.
And the silence scared me.
“Mom?” I asked in a whisper moments before I knocked on the door.
There was no answer.
I knocked again.
“Mom?” my question even more silent than before.
I sat down on the edge of the bed and turned on the television.
I watched the news.
I didn’t understand what any of it meant.
Explosions.
Riots.
Insurgents.
Demonstrations.
Futility.
Tears.
Anger.
Venom.
Hope.
Longing.
Despair.
I changed the channel.
More cartoons.
I can’t remember how much time passed before I heard the bathroom door unlock.
My mother stepped back into the room.
Her face was white. Her lips carried a thin smile.
“I’m okay,” she said softly and she sat down next to me on the edge of the bed. She wrapped her arm around my shoulder and pulled me close.
“What are you watching?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“That’s good.”
“Mom?”
“Yes X.?
“What were you doing in there?”
“Thinking.”
“What were you thinking about?”
“Nothing important. Really, nothing at all.”
“But it was a long time.”
“It’s okay to think about nothing for a long time.”
“Okay.”
I would find out much later from my mother that she had spent that time in the bathroom contemplating ending her life.
“But why?” I asked. “Why did you want to end your life?”
“I felt so empty inside X. I can’t quite explain it but it had been building for some time. When you feel that you’ve become a mere shell, that you’re nothing but artifice, hollowed out from the inside, when I saw my face in the bathroom mirror I knew I was already dead inside. It’s sad to realize that you have died before you’ve actually stopped living.”
“And did these feelings start after dad left?”
My mother shook her head.
“No, these feelings had been with me for a long time, since I was young. Since I was a kid really. These feelings ebbed and flowed all my life, but they really began to take hold again when your father went away. But they certainly weren’t new.”
“So what were you going to do in the bathroom? How were you contemplating ending it all?”
“Break the water glass, use the shards, lay down in the tub and let the warm water run and slice my wrists open.”
“Was this the first time you ever thought about suicide? About killing yourself and ending it all?”
My mother shook her head.
“Not at all. However, what made this different was that it was the first time I ever really felt like I could actually carry it out. That I could really do it, that suicide was no longer just a merely philosophical question.”
“So, why didn’t you? Why didn’t you slice your wrists open?”
“Because I couldn’t stand the thought of you coming through that bathroom door and finding me like that, with blood and water overflowing onto the floor. I couldn’t do that to you X. I couldn’t be that upfront and self-aggrandizing about the entire thing. I couldn’t be that selfish.”
“But it didn’t stop you from carrying it out eventually, from getting around to doing the deed.”
“That’s true.”
“So being self-aggrandizing wasn’t that much of an impediment to committing the act.”
“No, it wasn’t I suppose.”
“You just didn’t want me to be a direct witness.”
“You’re probably right. I didn’t want to do it, not when you were around.”
“That’s cold comfort.”
“I know it’s cold comfort,” my mother said.
My mother stood and returned to her lecture notes.
I turned off the television.
Dusk was settling.
I watched the sea.
And I watched a horse-drawn wagon trundle by, a single gas lantern lighting the way for the driver, the wagon’s bed filled with bloated corpses.
The carriage came to a stop in front of the hotel.
The driver, his head covered with a large, floppy straw hat, his nose and mouth covered with a bandana, raised the lantern and looked up at me.
He beckoned me to come down.
I turned to look at my mother but she was gone because the hotel had slipped a little into the past.
“Did you remember to take your pill?” was the last thing she had said to me and I had told her yes which was the truth.
I looked back at the driver.
He lowered the bandana so I could make out his face.
The bartender.
I left the hotel and walked out into the street and was struck by the stench of the deceased.
“It’s good to see you again X.,” the bartender said, his voice muffled.
I absorbed the smell.
I leaned over.
I gagged.
The bartender laughed.
He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a red bandana and extended it to me.
“Here, put this on,” he said. “It will take care of all the rot.”
I wrapped the bandana around my head and covered my nose and mouth. The stench subsided and I could breathe easily once again.
“Hop on,” the bartender said to me and he moved over. I climbed up onto the wagon and sat down down next to him. The bartender pulled on the reins and the wagon began moving.
“Where did you collect all the bodies? Where did they all come from?” I asked and the bartender laughed.
“Goodness,” he answered. “They’re everywhere. You just have to dig them out from underneath the debris.”
“The debris?”
“Yeah, I’m surprised you can’t see it. It’s hard not to notice. It’s end of the world kind of destruction, apocalyptic kind of stuff.”
“I don’t see any destruction. It doesn’t feel like the end of the world. You’re imagining things.”
“I’m not imagining anything, it’s all around us, you just can’t see it yet, that’s all, but believe you me, we’re in the midst of it. This entire town has been flattened, almost wiped off the map of reality.”
I looked back over my shoulder and saw the hotel shimmer uneasily in and out of existence and then, in a flash of bright white light, it disappeared.
“There’s no point in looking back,” the bartender said. “It’s not going to make any sense, no matter how much you try to make sense of it. Just look ahead for now.”
I glanced at the bodies in the bed.
I heard the buzz of flies as they tried to swarm.
“What happened?” I asked. “What caused the destruction?”
“Hurricane,” the bartender answered. “Terrible disaster. Could have been prevented though, could have been prevented. That’s the real shame. It was foreseeable, absolutely foreseeable.”
“When? When did all of this happen?”
“1900.”
“That’s more than a hundred years ago.”
“Yes, that’s correct. More than a hundred years ago, but it’s also right now. It’s always happening, always repeating itself, always occurring, right here, right here in the here and now.”
“I don’t understand. The past is in the past. An event occurs and then it becomes history. The past and the present don’t mix together.”
“For you, yes, from your perspective, I guess that’s true, and that’s how things operate for the most part in the here and now, but when you take a step back you realize that it’s not that simple, that there are many different layers to the order of things, that there is no single direction in which things move. Certainly not time. Time only appears to move in one direction but it’s actually not really contained at all.”
“I don’t understand. How can time move all over the place?”
“X., one thing you need to know about me is that I’m not scientifically minded. I’m just here to keep an eye on you. But let me tell you this X., and this I know, this I know for a fact. When you made yourself really small, once you willed yourself out of existence, once you crossed over, phased into the other place, well, let’s just say that you’re never really fully functioning one-hundred percent in the here and now anymore. No sir. You’re no longer complete. A part of you is gone, has been left behind. You’re kind of in two places at once. A little bit of your soul, a little bit of your residue still exists in the other place. And boy, by dropping in on us like you did you’ve generated a lot of interest. We haven’t seen the likes of you in ages. I know this isn’t precise, probably not the answer that you want, but you’ll find out answers soon enough. The answers are written and they’re right around the corner. There are people more learned than me who can explain this a whole lot better. I’m just a bartender and a caretaker. I’m here only because I’m a good conversationalist. That’s my skill. I’m just a conversationalist. But they’ve got their eye on you, most certainly. But as to how times moves all over the place? It just does. That’s all I know. It just does.”
“Who’s asking you to do this? Who’s asking you to keep an eye on me?”
“The voice.”
“The voice?”
“You’ve talked to the voice. You’ve had conversations with the voice. Don’t act surprised.”
“And what is the voice?”
The bartender shrugged his shoulders.
“I’m not quite sure. No one is sure. It’s just always been there. The voice is the voice I suppose. It’s what we hear. Sometimes it’s loud, sometimes it’s distant, sometimes it’s not even there at all. It is what it is and is nothing more and nothing less.”
“Is the voice God?”
The bartender laughed.
“Heavens no!” he exclaimed in answer. “Now wouldn’t that just be grand! The voice being God? That’s a good one X. That’s just keen of you to think such a thing. The voice is surely flattered. Probably swelling with intense pride right now. I’m sure the voice feels quite good about itself to hear someone compare it to God, especially if that someone is you.”
The wagon turned right onto a long pier. At the end of the pier was a barge covered with corpses.
The bartender brought the wagon to a stop.
Two stocky men wearing bandanas approached the wagon and began to unload the corpses, tossing them onto the barge. The bodies made a soft smack as they landed on top of one another.
“Why are they putting the bodies on that boat?” I asked.
“Well, there are so many bodies that there’s no hope of burying them all,” the bartender answered. “There’s just no room, so the bodies are going to be dumped far at sea.”
The two men picked up the last corpse and began to position themselves to heave it onto the barge. The bartender stood in the wagon and raised the lantern.
“Wait!” the bartender shouted. “Just wait one moment!”
The men stalled the momentum they had generated.
The bartender jumped down from the wagon and approached the men.
“You can put the body down for a moment,” the bartender said and the two men dropped the corpse onto the pier.
The bartender knelt, his knees popped, and he held the lantern up by the corpse’s face.
The bartender let out a sympathetic sigh and then stood and turned and faced me.
“Can you get down here X.?” he asked and his voice was solemn. “I’m sorry I have to be the bearer of unfortunate news.”
I lowered myself from the wagon.
I walked towards the corpse, stopped, and let out a gasp.
From the light of the bartender’s lantern I could make out the face quite clearly.
“I thought he was safe, at least that’s what my mom told me,” I said as I waited for the panic to build. “He’s living in the Green Zone. Everyone tells me the Green Zone is a safe place. That it’s safer than home. He told us he wouldn’t be in danger.”
“Again, I’m sorry X.”
“Dad?” I asked my father’s corpse in the hope that his eyes would open but I knew, I knew that he was gone and I felt everything inside of me whither and my hands began to tremble and when the truth of his death and the inherent absoluteness of his fate became manifest in my reality, I let out a scream that intended to split the world in two.
And my mother held me tight.
“There, there X., there, there,” she cooed in my ear and she stroked my hair. I gasped for breath. “It’s okay, everything is okay, everything will be okay. It was just a dream. It was nothing more than a bad dream.”
And I tried to let her words calm me.
I closed my eyes and I thought I felt the presence of the voice, and the voice tried to speak but before it could be heard an injection of darkness flooded my brain.
“You need to stop,” the darkness soothed, kneading these words gently into my consciousness and it was as if a drain was opened and every thought, hope, dream, and fear I possessed swirled away.
When my consciousness returned I found myself sitting in a large conference room in the Galveston convention center.
A gray-haired man in black-rimmed glasses stood at the dais. He read off a list of superlatives relating to my mother’s academic career
And then there was applause.
The gray-haired man hugged my mother and whispered something into her ear. Whatever he said made her laugh a real laugh.
And then she took her place behind the podium and the room quieted and I realized how happy she looked. She was in her element. She was in a place where everything made sense.
She acknowledged me and the crowd turned and I stood and everyone clapped and I felt uncomfortable but touched.
And then the crowd quieted once again and my mother began to talk and it was an intense talk.
The mood of the room was with her as she discussed Gog and Megog and Ronald Reagan and a prayer meeting with Billy Graham when Reagan was still governor of California and how after the prayer had come to an end there was an electric jolt that ran through Reagan’s arm and a blue light seemed to diffuse the room and that’s when those gathered with the governor realized that Reagan had been touched by the hand of God, had been blessed, had been chosen, had been given a divine role to play in the world, like Moses when God had spoken to him through the form of a burning bush.
And my mother continued on and described how Reagan embraced this role of being God’s chosen in the final days, in the end times, when the world was poised on the brink of nuclear annihilation, and how being selected at this specific historical verge spoke volumes to Reagan because he now understood, as God’s emissary on the face of this Earth, that he was being tasked with stopping the Battle of Armageddon from coming to pass. God had selected Reagan not to carry out God’s will, but to impede God’s will, to bring it to a standstill, to serve as an obstacle to Jesus’ return, to keep the second coming and the rapture at bay, and to allow all of humanity to continue living their lives regardless of how much sin and evil they continued to perpetuate.
And then my mother began to examine the rhetorical architecture through which this occurred.
She analyzed the speech in front of the National Association of Evangelicals where Reagan labeled the Soviet Union an “Evil Empire.”
She examined how the speech was put together, the role Reagan played in its construction, what edits were made by his hand, and what passages were written by him as opposed to speechwriters.
She noted how he excised language that referred to divisions within America.
“When confronting the Soviet Union, regardless of whatever conflicts existed within the United States on left and right, Reagan chose to present his shining city on a hill as nothing less than a United Front.”
And the audience laughed.
And then she made her leap and argued that the speech Reagan made in front of the National Association of Evangelicals served a larger purpose, to create a philosophical framework for the public within which Reagan could present, less than one week later, the introduction of Star Wars, the space-based missile defense program.
My mother’s lecture concluded.
“Questions?” my mother asked and many hands went up.
She fielded the questions brilliantly. She was beautiful, smooth, and confident.
And when the questions came to an end, a round of applause filled the room.
I was proud of her.
That night my mother went to a function.
She left me alone in the room.
She told me I was now old enough to take care of myself.
I sat alone, holding onto my secret knowledge that my father, her husband, was dead.
“Not yet,” the voice said. “He’s not dead yet. It’s going to happen, soon enough, but right now he’s hard at work.”
“What’s he doing now?” I asked.
“He’s in a small house in the suburbs of the city. He’s eating breakfast with a group of lawyers. Some of them speak English. He’s asking them questions, they’re asking him questions, it’s very philosophical and he’s holding up his end of the conversation quite well. They’re laughing at some of his jokes. When the breakfast is over and he leaves they’ll possess little ill will against him.”
“And when is he going to die?”
“Soon.”
“But when?”
And the voice did not answer.
I went downstairs into the lobby.
I sat in a comfortable lounge chair and watched the people checking in.
I walked over to the bar and ordered a Shirley Temple.
The bartender allowed me to take a seat.
He sported an eye patch.
He told me in his spare time he worked at NASA, that he helped train astronauts to conduct repairs on the Hubble Telescope.
He told me story after story and I didn’t believe a word he said.
I spied my mother in the corner cuddling with the gray-haired man.
She kissed him gently.
And then he kissed her passionately and she returned the kiss.
I thought about my father eating breakfast with lawyers.
Download this book for your ebook reader.
(Pages 1-40 show above.)