Home Again

Tears sprang to her mother’s eyes, and she moved forward, opening her arms.

Woodenly Lina moved into the circle of her mother’s embrace, felt the warm, loving arms enfold her, and suddenly she was a child again. Six years old, and she wanted to believe that her mother could make everything better.

She waited for her mother to say something, to give Lina some magical, miraculous words that would turn back the clock.

But her mother didn’t speak, just held her.

And Lina knew. It would never be all right again.

He sits on the porch swing, trying to make it sway beneath him, but the wooden slats remain utterly motionless. The air is thick and heavy and smells of nothing. Before, he wouldn’t have known what that was, nothingness, but now he does. He tries to remember the million smells that used to linger around her front porch. Roses and fresh-cut grass, the fecund humidity of muddy earth when the rains came, the smell of the wind itself as it blew leaves across the sidewalk. Even the dead brown wisteria vines that curl around her white railing used to have their own wintery smell.

Now there is nothing. The wind moves past him. He can see it touching the fallen leaves, swirling in minute whirlpools on the brown grass, but none of it touches him where he sits in the porch swing that can’t be made to move.

He is waiting for something to happen, that’s all he knows. There is a moment out there, hovering beyond his grasp; he feels it the way he used to feel rain on his cheeks or the wind at his back. He has something left to do.

He has learned that if he concentrates very, very hard, he can find himself inside her house, wandering among her things, reaching out for bits and pieces—mementos of a past he is rapidly forgetting. But it makes him tired, all that thinking, and it makes him feel things that hurt, and when he’s done, he wishes he hadn’t moved, had just sat here on this swing where he feels so at home.

Last night Lina was beside him, and when she first sat down, he felt the swing rustle and move beneath him. So much so, he could almost feel the movement of the wind, almost hear the creaking of the wooden slats. But he thinks, in the end, it was just a memory, that he couldn’t hear those things at all.

She had cried, his precious baby, and in some pocket of his soul, he’d known that she was crying for him. He’d ached to touch her, comfort her, but he couldn’t concentrate with the hacking sound of her sobs washing over him. So he’d done what he could, used the power that seemed to lie curled in the emptiness of his belly. He’d squeezed his eyes shut and spoken to her in his mind. Words, remnants of words he could barely remember.

I’m here, Lina. I’m here….

He’d thought the words over and over and over, and still her tears had gone on, wrenching through him, making him ache.

Finally she’d gone into the house, and he’d followed her, drifting from room to room, wanting desperately to feel that he belonged in this place, the only real home he’d ever known. But with each passing bit of time, he’d felt himself getting weaker and weaker. Once, when he looked down, he couldn’t see his feet, and in the next second, his legs were beginning to fade. Finally he’d curled up on the end of her bed like a cat and closed his eyes.

The next thing he knows, he’s here again, stationed on the porch swing. Sunlight is all around him, streaming from billowy clouds perched high in a clear blue sky. A last yellow-green leaf rustles on the wisteria vine and floats to the lawn.

He looks down and his feet are still gone, his legs are inconstant shimmerings of shadow against the white paint of the porch floorboards. He wonders how long it will go on, this slow vanishing, and what will become of him when it is over.

And so he waits.

Angel was lying very still. Everything was dark. He could hear sounds, noises that were a confusing, frightening din. He blinked, tried to open his eyes. Failed.

“Angel?”

He heard her voice, coming at him from beyond the darkness. He needed her suddenly, needed her so much…. He tried again to open his eyes. His lashes flickered. It took so much energy….

He heard her voice again, coaxing him, whispering his name. He fought to push aside the layers of cotton and fog that pressed around him. Finally one eye cracked open, and light stabbed him, sent him scurrying again for the comforting shadows.

“Come on, Angel, open your eyes.”

Slowly, hesitantly, he tried again. And found her sitting beside him, her masked face inches from his. For a split second he was seventeen again, and she was his Madelaine, waiting for him.

He tried to remember where he was, why she was here.

Then he noticed his heartbeat, strong and even. Ta-dum, ta-dum, ta-dum.

He squeezed his eyes shut and all he could hear was his—someone else’s—heart hammering away in his chest, thudding beneath his skin. He wanted to reach for the needles and tubes and rip them all out, but his hands were weak and shaking.

He’d never experienced such a devastating sense of violation, of loss. He felt invaded; the stranger’s heart didn’t belong in him. He felt it with every breath, thumping too loudly, aching in his damaged chest. Where was his own heart? Weak and useless as it was, it was his, and now it was gone. Lying in the trash somewhere …

His heart, the storehouse of his soul, his dreams, his ideas…

“Oh, Christ…” he whispered in a scratchy, broken voice that

he didn’t even recognize. Panic swooped in.