Into This River I Drown

It’s just bad wiring, I told myself.

I took another step and gagged on the smell.

It’s how they keep things clean.

I shivered with the next step, my teeth starting to chatter.

It’s how they keep things preserved.

Another step, and I knew it would just take one more.

I was almost there, so I took it. I took the last step.

The lights buzzed loudly.

Before I could stop myself, before I could turn and run from the room screaming that it was a lie, this was all a lie, and please, please, let me just wake up, I raised my hands to grip the sheet near its edge. I focused on what was so clearly the point of a nose and thought, Big Eddie never had that big of a nose. A mistake! There’s been a mistake and he’s alive! He’s alive, he’s alive, he’s alive. My father was alive. He was not under the sheet. His nose was not that big. He was somewhere safe and soon would come out of hiding and take me in his arms, and I would feel my back crack as he hugged me tightly.

With this certainty, I pulled back the sheet.

And moaned.

It was too much at once. Big Eddie Green was lying there, in this cold room, on this cold table, under this cold sheet that felt scratchy in my hands. I thought I could refuse to believe it at first, that my mind in a last-ditch effort to save itself wouldn’t let me see what was actually there. But it did.

His skin was starkly white, much whiter than it had ever been in life. I was distracted by splashes of color, though, like paint on a canvas. The area around his closed eyes was violet, like a mask made of bruises. A bloodless red cut zigzagged across his forehead, starting from his left eyebrow and rising up to his right temple. A navy blue knot of flesh rose from the left side of his head, as if he’d struck it on impact. His parted lips, a pale pink. The hint of white teeth underneath. That dark stubble on his head. On his face.

Only then did I become aware of a low sound in the room, almost like a strangled cry, a gasp of air. I looked around wildly. No one was there. I was alone. And only then did I realize the sound was coming from me as I let it out again. A hand had seized my lungs and my throat had closed. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t pull in air. I was suffocating next to a Big Eddie whose face was covered in impossible colors, in such an improbable shape. Bile tried to rise, but my throat was too constricted for it to get any farther.

It’s a lie, I tried, one last time. He said he’d come home in the afternoon. It’s a lie. It’s a lie.

I thought the life I have now would not be possible. Your mom. You. None of this seemed like it could be real. Like it could be mine. It seemed impossible.

I opened my mouth to admit the truth to myself.

Instead, I screamed.

I had to be sedated then and for the days that followed. I was told later my screams could be heard throughout the building, and I didn’t stop until Old Doc Heward injected something into my arm. The world fell into a hazy mix of violet, like bruising. Red, like cuts. Blue, like knots. For want of my father, I was lost.

A week after Cal returns, we sit on the roof, in the dark. Waiting. Watching.

So much to say, so many things to ask, but for the moment I don’t care. I don’t care about any of it. For the moment, all I care about is the way I fit against his chest like we were made for each other, two separate pieces interlocking to be made whole. All I care about are his arms around me like I’m the most precious thing in the world to him. For all I know, maybe I am.

That’s all I care about. Until I open my mouth. “The dreams are getting worse,” I say as the sky begins to lighten in the east.

Cal pulls me in tighter. “I know,” he says gruffly. “Don’t you think I know?”

“You saw it the last time, didn’t you.”

“Saw what?” he asks, but he knows.

I wait.

“Yes,” he sighs. “Yes, I saw it.”

“Why would my father have a feather in his hand? One of yours?”

I can feel his frustration mounting, but not at me. Not yet. “I don’t know,” he says. “I wish I did. I’m praying every chance I get. I’m begging, I’m threatening, I’m demanding an answer. I can’t remember, and I need to know why. My Father is testing me, and I don’t know why. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.” He’s vibrating by the time he’s finished, his anger spilling over.

“You guard,” I say as I burrow myself further into his embrace.