High as the Horses' Bridles: A Novel (22 page)

He said, “There are plenty of things worse than death.”

I let go, and I stood there, looking at this young man, at the two of them, and I’m sure they were wondering, What’s wrong with this guy? What’s he standing around for? I thought of Sarah upstairs, all alone, and how I so wanted to be up there with her, right beside her, and I thought of the child, or not the child, exactly, but the idea of the child we might have had, and how it was only just that, an idea, a nothing, and not really here at all, and yet it was all I could think about so, in a way, it was right there in front of me. I actually started to cry. I wiped my face.

Bart said, “You want us to stay?”

“Funny,” I said, “the strangest thing I just thought of. My father took me to a funeral, when I was a kid.”

They were interested.

I said, “Not really a funeral, more like a wake for one of the neighborhood kids. About my age. He just disappeared one day. A year goes by and they figured we’d better have a service. Cleared the whole living room of furniture. No coffin.”

Gerard said, “That’s so sad.”

Bart said, “There’s no guarantee this side of Armageddon. But your little friend, he’ll be on the other side. Waiting, and all made new.”

I smiled at the thought, but I also realized, if this were in fact true, how strange it would be if he were raised still a child.

Sun splintered up there on the bedroom window, and I figured there had to be another kind of time, aside from what I imagined eternity is, or infinity is, and aside from our few years here on earth, a kind of time outside us, because I could pull a memory like fruit from a branch. I could reach for little Issy’s face like an apple, and there he was.

Now Bart was talking about Armageddon, and how it would be good news for some.

I listened and was all of a sudden filled up with love for them both. I wanted to take them by the shoulders and shake them. I wanted to promise them a day would come when they would see the hard ground for the first time, really see it, and the sky, and the water, and if they were lucky, it would break their hearts. I wanted to promise them that on that day, your heads would fill up with fear, and with love, and that one day you’ll get married, and you’ll never guess how vicious things get in love, and if you’re not careful, your wife will rightfully brain you with a pasta spoon, and talk of possible futures without you, and you will eventually come around, but it’ll be way too late, and the floor will fall away from your feet. But who was I to promise such a thing? We were standing there, all quiet, and then I saw something: I saw fear in their eyes, I knew it, a natural human fear. I turned away from them. And looked up again. I faced the bedroom window, and closed my eyes, and I thought of Sarah and her claustrophobia, and I hoped she felt secure and safe and warm in her bath, but if someone ever asked if she was afraid of confined spaces, she would always answer, Absolutely not. This was a fear so ingrained, so embedded in her cells, that it only simply existed, was taken for granted, like the blood in her veins or the flesh on the soles of her feet. A fear like this is a hole, a blind spot, a negative space, and it makes itself knowable only by implication, by habit, by her choosing stairwells over elevators, by her avoidance of underwater tunnels whenever possible, and by her long lone runs into infinite space, no walls or ceilings anywhere. I opened my eyes, and saw her up there, my sweet wife, it was Sarah; how easy it is to forget how much and why we love who we love. She was standing at the bedroom window. A faint trace of a smile. She waved, just the barest suggestion of a wave, a slow and tired show of her palm, like she was saying goodbye. I turned, and the young men were gone.

Three hours I stayed in that storeroom. Three hours before coming out for air, and for lunch, and for something to drink because I was thirsty—and what did I find? Cold coffee, a crumpled brown paper bag, and a burrito half-congealed with cheese, poking out its head from a foil sleeping bag. All of this looking lonely on a cardboard box outside the storeroom door.

“What’s this?”

“What?” Amad was plugging in the vacuum.

“This. Cold.” I was sipping the coffee. “Totally cold. You couldn’t tell me it was here? Where’s Teri?”

“You missed her. Running errands.” The vacuum turned on,
vroom
ing loud like a go-cart, and he pressed the thing with his foot so the top part with the bag unlocked from the sucking part and he pushed it around in front of him. “And you said to leave you alone!”

I shook my head. “I win fair and square. And cold.”

He wasn’t listening or couldn’t hear me, just kept pushing the vacuum. Something small, hard, and metallic rattled up inside it.

I’d made some progress, planned an order, and filled a garbage bag with what we should have realized was garbage long ago. The floor was now showing through. I took a bite of the burrito. Delicious. And so I was a little annoyed that I could no longer be as annoyed as I had been with Amad for letting it get cold. What is it about California burritos? Why can’t the other forty-nine states get it right? Or even close? Why can’t they master a tortilla so it doesn’t fall apart in your hands like a hot wet salad? And avocado everywhere. If you don’t love avocado, then I pity your soul, and your soul’s lack of green supple goodness. On every California plate like how New York puts parsley. It’s generous. No pale ribbing of kale for a garnish. I mean, even the garnish was gorgeous, and it waited in a small plastic-covered cup at the bottom of the bag. But bring me hot sauce. Always hot sauce.

“No hot sauce?” I shouted over the
vroom
.

“What?” Amad shouted back, didn’t turn around, and kept pushing.

I couldn’t think straight it was so loud, so I grabbed the coffee and took my lunch outside, figuring I should try Dad again. I waved to Amad, pointing at my ears, “I can’t hear you,” and then to the door, “Be outside.” I set the bag and burrito on the bench, sipped my coffee.

It was a lovely day, and the sky seemed a bit dark for so early. I called him. No answer. I called him again. No answer. It wasn’t like he had a message service or a machine because God knows the man would never use one because he didn’t care to, or he refused to learn how, or for some other irrational reason, and he’d say something like If I can talk, we’ll talk. If I’m there, we’ll talk. How can we talk if I’m not even there? This literalism always drove me nuts.

The vacuum stopped. I went back inside.

“My father’s not answering the phone.”

He gave me a curt nod.

“I talked to him before, doesn’t sound good. Sarah said he sounds pretty bad. He was a little loopy.”

“How loopy?” He was wrapping the cord around the vacuum neck.

“He said my mom was there.”

“Where? There?”

My phone rang. “Dad?”

He sounded far away: “Why is my phone ringing so much?” Almost like he was on speakerphone and actually walking away from the phone while we talked. “I’m trying to sleep.”

“I wanted to see how you’re doing. I told you before I’d call.”

“When?”

“Before. This morning.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He was yelling now.

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Well, you’re alive.”

“Yes! I’m alive! Are you satisfied? I’m going to bed.”

“It’s like two o’clock. That’s like four o’clock your time.”

“I’m tired.” He hung up.

I looked at Amad, shrugged my shoulder.

I went back in the storeroom, and I wanted a cigarette because now I was feeling anxious and I’d forgotten to smoke one outside. Plus there was no smoking in the storeroom, one of Amad’s many rules. I’d smoke later on with another cup of coffee, but a
hot
cup of coffee. Planning cigarettes was almost always as pleasurable as smoking them. I’d never given real thought to who was taking care of my father at home since Mom died. Who was cooking? Was the man having hot meals? Then again, a burrito could be just as good cold. I organized and moved things. I swept. I picked up broken glass from things that fell from the top shelves and broke around me while I was cleaning up—we’d been on to something, after all, with those yellow lines—and before you know it Amad was standing in the doorway eating an apple, and saying “You’re hired.”

“I’m being serious,” he said. “This inspires me. So clean!” He ran his finger along a shelf, held it up to the light, and even from where I was standing I could see the filthy smudge.

“Getting there,” I said.

“Yes. And I’m going home now.” He put out his hand. I shook it, exaggeratedly, like, You got a deal there, mister. I wiped what smudge came with it on my jeans.

“You close shop?” he asked me.

“It’s been a long time.”

“Yes.”

“I’ll close shop,” I said, feeling very proud.

He waved as he walked away, and closed the door behind him.

I walked home along the water, and had my cigarette with a hot black coffee I got at the corner gas station. The smoke climbed up, the color of the moon’s silver swirls. Obviously I had to go see Dad. As soon as possible. Maybe tomorrow. Tomorrow? Or was that too soon? But if I went tomorrow, it meant no dinner with Sarah … Which was an easy decision, yes, but also it felt important. I needed to recognize it. And then I looked out at the dark water and could’ve sworn I saw someone coming out of the ocean. A shadow of someone, probably just had a night swim, but then he bled away in the night.

I blinked my eyes, shook my head.

Dad was getting old, and I knew what comes next, what always comes next, and I wondered why I was smoking so much when I hardly liked the taste anymore. Plus dinner probably wouldn’t have happened anyway. She and I were dead, long dead, and shamefully, forgive me, but a dying and not-quite-dead-yet part of me also used to sometimes stand by that water and watch the sun drop below the waterline at sunset, and I’d wish the great reddening ball would quash out, get doused, fall purple and cooling toward the bottom of the ocean. Take us all down with it. I put out my cigarette in the sand. I was getting morbid, and maudlin, and decided that what I really needed was to just get laid.

There was so much sand, and the ocean was rolling in and rolling out, and the waves were playing and toppling like animals wrestling. Water roiling and boiling in the dark. And then it happened again. I saw someone coming from the water. But this time it was two men, looking like two black liquid things walking from the water, except they stayed where they were, and were sort of suspended. One of the drilling rigs miles away on the water let out a booming signal, and it spooked me, so I took off running; then I stopped. I turned back and there they were, natural as night, two figures forming there in front of me. They were made of the water, and the dark light, and the night air. Just as fast, they disappeared. They rose up again from underwater, and then bled away in the darkness. It was all a trick of the light, or the no-light. I was tired, and I was seeing things, a grown man running from ghosts on a cool and lovely summer evening by the water. Things would be better in the morning.

EAST

3

SATURDAY MORNING, QUEENS

The long
PINNNGGG
of a doorbell rudely pealed through the fog in my brain. My face all pressed up against the armrest of the couch, Dad’s knees slowly went by. At some point in the night I’d apparently wrapped myself in the sheet. Cats were resting on my back. The doorbell pinged again. I wanted a tremendous orange juice. Voices in the front hall, feet shuffling, and then blurry sounds coming from the kitchen …

“Have a good day, Mr. Laudermilk.”

Dad shouted: “It’s a good morning, Junior, so let’s take advantage!” The front door closed. “I made us some coffee!”

My face was mashed against the armrest and it felt just right until the part of my brain in charge of such things suddenly woke. The whole face hurt, pressure on every pore and wrinkle. I turned over, cats darting from the sofa. I stretched with a loud groan, causing an animal chain reaction where, beside the table, two fat cats, one first, then another, bowed up like stuffed feline stoles, stretching their spines. They yawned and fell back asleep.

I pulled aside the draping a bit, squinting at the outside day, and watched a deliveryman drop two garbage bags on the curb before hopping into a brown double-parked truck. Still in the head-melt of sleep, I saw an empty wine bottle on the table, a shallow bowl littered with cigarette stubs, and my phone, open, dead. The thought of smoking made me nauseated. I walked toward the kitchen and became aware, and weirdly okay with the fact, that I, too, was now walking barefoot, instinctively avoiding the cat turds and everything else. Dad was framed by a beige window shade behind him. He was wearing his loincloth and a white T-shirt. A large box lay on the table.

I pointed to the window shade. “Why not let some day in here?”

“Days are finished, Junior.”

He was drinking coffee from an oversized mug emblazoned with a screaming image of Max Headroom. He sipped, Max all glaring teeth and white plastic shades. I had to look away.

He said, “I love a cup of coffee in the morning. One cup.”

“Who was your visitor?”

“Delivery.”

A haze and muffle between my ears.

“You found the wine.” He pointed to yet another empty bottle on the counter.

“Jesus. Sorry.”

“No, it’s good. I’m glad.”

“I’ll be fine. I’m fine. What?” I was a palm-sized man climbing my own insides like a cave.

“What I say?”

“I thought you said something,” I said.

“Not me,” he said. “And I gotta say I’m glad you’re not feeling so hot.”

Another Max Headroom mug sat beside the coffeemaker. It was already filled with coffee. “That’s a terrible thing to say.” I picked it up. My right palm was pulsing; I switched hands and took a sip.

“Means you’re no professional, which makes me glad. Never was either, myself. You hungry?”

“There is no food in this house.”

“Bread and butter, Junior. Food of the gods.” He looked toward the counter where the bread, the butter semiwrapped in waxy paper, and a knife lay. A pallid still life.