The Last Time I Died (11 page)

I lean back. There are just as many images flying above me. I’d stay here forever if I could. In a second it will all be over.

There. My childhood house. The laundry room.

I focus.

It’s March of whatever year I was eight.

I’m terrified.

Hiding in the corner behind a laundry basket. I’m watching my mother as she cries, staring at the locked door as she crouches next to the washing machine, terrified. The room is hot from the dryer. The washing machine is spinning an unbalanced load, making too much noise and offering too little protection. Her dress is a light floral pattern that seems familiar to me. She’s swimming in it. Must be fifteen pounds lighter than the last memory I saw her in. Oilier hair. Deeper lines in her face.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Someone is pounding on the door. It might break.

It’s my father. He’s yelling through the hollow wood.

—Let me in there, God dammit! Open this fucking door or I’ll break it down!

BOOMBOOMBOOM! The door cracks a little at the top. The hinges are loosening from the door frame. My mother can’t stop shivering. She’s wearing house slippers and they’re filthy as if she might have been wearing them outside as well. The smell of her perfume mixed with her sweat wafts my way. I have to remember this part. How the fuck do I sketch a scent?

She looks back my direction but I don’t think she sees me. Her eyes are wide like an animal’s.

—Open up!

She grabs the sides of her head and screams. My eight-year-old self wipes a full palm of sweat beads from my forehead. How long have we been in here?

—Leave me alone! Why can’t you leave me alone!

She curls up tighter on the floor and convulses with sobs. I’m watching. Helpless. Paralyzed.

She looks up at me. She does see me. Talks to me like I’m an adult.

—Why won’t he leave me alone?

I have no answer for her. She sobs and my father beats on the door.

I can’t hold on much longer. I look around and force myself to remember every detail. The cluttered shelves. The sound of her sniffles. The vibration of the off-kilter washing machine. The heat of the dryer. The feel of the tension coming from the door. Everything.

And then it’s gone.

Black.

An ambulance siren.

I’m strapped down.

I’m bursting through hospital doors.

My clothes are ripping.

Someone yells
Clear!

A PHOOMP of defibrillator paddles.

A heart monitor beeps once and my soul smiles.

I did it.

Black.

I wake up. Tired in my bones.

I move my eyes enough to look around the room. This must be a community or teaching or whatever kind of hospital is the dirtiest. Very different from my last stay. Isn’t there a code hospitals have to adhere to? I feel like SoHo should have something nicer to service its ill and deranged. At least something hip. But this place is a dump. Someone should be fired.

There’s an old guy in the bed next to me. Coma. Gotta be.

An orderly changes coma guy’s sheets like he’s fixing a flat. Not what you would call rough, although not overly concerned with his patient’s comfort. But what’s the old guy going to say? He’s probably never going to wake up. I wonder if he’s wallowing in his own memories? Living in The White. Did he figure it out? Is he leisurely traipsing through his own childhood? Or is he sleeping off a tough life in The Black? Either way, I’m a bit envious.

The real question is how many times can I pull this off? It’s draining like nothing I’ve ever felt, but I already know I’ll do it again. I can still smell the fabric softener. I can see every wrinkle in my mother’s face. I can feel the grit on the floor. How long until it fades? The edges are already crumbling. How much of the story have I lost?

Two doctors look over my file. Their backs are to me. I don’t say anything.

—He’s lucky he didn’t break his neck.

—I.D.?

—John Doe. No wallet. I think someone’s checking with the building manager to get a positive I.D. At least we know where to send the bill.

What are the chances they’ll let me borrow a pencil and a sketch pad? I’d settle for a hypodermic and a clean sheet and draw in my own blood if I could start right now. Every second counts. Man, are they taking their time.

—Bellevue?

—Any family to admit him?

—Nah. He’s a loner. This’ll have to be involuntary.

—You gonna sign for it?

—Go ahead.

—I’ll shoot you for it.

Then they actually shoot for it, the fucks. The Indian doctor loses and I can tell he’s pissed about it. I don’t want him changing my sheets.

They look back at me but my eyes are closed. Saw that coming.

—Fucking broken people. I’ll make the call.

—Let’s get him out today. We need the bed.

They leave to go make some other important medical decisions and perhaps roshambo in the event of a disagreement on a diagnosis.

So this is it. Fuck Bellevue.

I force myself to sit up. Don’t see my clothes anywhere. I pull the needles and tubes out of my arms and hop out of bed as fast as a guy who was dead for forty minutes can move. Which is not very fast.

Coma guy has some clothes hanging in his cubby. Cheap fucking place can’t even put doors on the closets. He’s a little shorter than me, and his shirt smells like old man sweat but they’re close enough. There are no shoes. I don’t care. I just need to get home without being arrested.

I have work to do.

(Hmm.)

Say what you will about the careless manner in which the old boy conducts his life, but there can be little doubt that our man is nothing less than dedicated to his newfound artistic vision. A conservative estimate would put the number of drawings he has output since his last death at sixty-five. Granted, not all of them are Louvre-worthy. I remind you these are the product of a man whose most recent previous work consisted of a compilation of marginalia featuring respected business colleagues fellating one another amidst innumerable scatological references dashed off in the sidelines of what should have been professional, detailed notes. Hardly a collection to set off a bidding war among the Rothschilds.

But this.

This assemblage of captured memories our man has generated is nothing short of impressive. The perspective is memorable. The style is distinct. The passion is undeniable. This is the work of a man driven by a vision that is positively insistent.

Or it is vain lunacy. Who’s to say?

I keep going.

More drawings.

The door.

The laundry room.

The yelling.

I’m sitting at my kitchen counter aware that my lower back is aching but unwilling to stretch until I get these last details right.

The pounding.

The hinges.

The pleading.

The tears.

The anger in my father’s voice.

The heat.

How do I draw heat?

I don’t draw myself because I don’t know what I looked like. I am the missing puzzle piece, but I’m also the least important one. I have no idea what I was at this time in my life. Or anytime before it. There are no pictures of me that young. Or there were but they’re gone now. Probably at some point someone loved me enough to take my picture, but, to my knowledge, no proof exists to support this theory. My father’s personal effects from jail were minimal and did not include photos of either of his children. Seemingly, a result of his overwhelming guilt.

If pictures of us were kept around the house, I wouldn’t know. I never went back after my mother died. Never took anything personal from the place. Not a picture. Not a toy. Not a teddy bear. Someone must have taken my clothes for me or maybe they bought me new ones.

I assume my family’s apartment was left to rot with no one to pay the mortgage. How long did the place sit empty before it was cleared out, pictures and all, and auctioned off to a stranger? Who would buy it after all that? Somebody. It’s New York.

My mother’s eyes. Her posture. The cower. The fear. The desolation. She was scared for her life.

There must have been at least one picture of me, but I’ll never see it. What I looked like doesn’t make a bit of difference. A fraidy cat little shit probably. That’s not important for what I’m doing here. What I need is every detail of what I actually saw. An analogue download.

One day, maybe this loft will sit rotting and waiting for someone to clean it out and sell it to the highest bidder. I have pictures of me and Lisa all over this place. Any broker walking in here might convince themselves that at one time we were a happy couple. Look at us. There we were in Paris. There we were skiing. There we were on our honeymoon. We will mean nothing to them. Former owners long gone. Our images will be tossed out to depersonalize the space for prospective buyers. Eighteen hundred square feet of sanitized, tragedy-free potential happiness for a new owner who has no idea what happened in here.

I finish the sketch of my mother and caption it:
Why won’t he leave me alone?

It goes on the floor with the others. I step away from the vast landscape of work to get a wider view. Does that do anything for me?

No.

There’s a broader sense of the scope to my vision, but the holes are immense. At best it tells me how much I don’t know. A lot.

*It’s two years ago.

I’m standing in the bathroom watching Lisa cry in the shower.

The room is filled with steam. The water is too hot for her to stay like that for as long as she is. It’s got to burn but she’s not reacting. She wants it to hurt.

She doesn’t know I’m watching her. I can see her ribs through her skin like they were shrink-wrapped for sale in a butcher shop.

She spoke to her dad on the phone every night until she was twenty-five. She told me once that even when she was living with that moron hockey player she was so crazy about she still called her father every night. Just to touch base.

Her mother had preferred her younger brother. It’s an open secret in the family. He’s the favorite child. She spoiled him, really. In the most literal sense, she spoiled him. He started out the fresh, smart, handsome, young man with athletic ability boiling over. But couple that with an obsessive mother who loved to yell, but not really discipline, and nineteen short years later there he was in a rehab talking about his feelings and trying to blame everyone else for the mess that he was born to be. Consciously or not, she set him up to fail and spent his childhood making sure it would happen. Which left Lisa to bond with her dad.

He watched every soccer practice she ever went to. Helped with her homework nightly without fail. Drove her to sleep-away camp in Maine nine hours each way. Took her to Italy for her high school graduation. She used his credit card until she got her second job. He paid her rent until she made vice president. They still have lunch twice a month. He takes the train up to meet her.

I’m supposed to live up to that?

We spoke on the phone less than an hour ago and she sounded a little off but no more than usual since she got the news. It’s been three weeks of roller coaster emotions. I’ve been wrong about everything. Anything that’s not perfect is my fault. I’m a bottomless pit of responsibility. But that’s my part to play. I’m replacing her father who took care of everything. Her shield. Only I’m terrible at it. I have no role models to reflect on. My moral compass is homemade and clunky. Not even sure it’s magnetized. Asking me for emotional direction is like asking a couch for fashion advice.

She’s so helpless, angry, spinning. There’s nothing I can do. Or there’s everything, but I won’t do it.

I could ask how she’s holding up.

I could tell her I’m coming home early.

I could listen.

I’m only good to a point and then I’m nothing. I don’t know why.

If I had to bet, I’d say she’s lost eleven pounds. She would say she’s the same as she’s always been and she eats plenty. And then she would smile and I would let that convince me to leave it alone. I’m pretty good at that.

He missed the diagnosis.

The brilliant doctor. The old family friend. The trusted oncologist. Thirty years in the business and he missed the diagnosis.

Missed it.

And I know Lisa. She’s rehashing the scene she wasn’t even there for over and over again in her head. Examining every possible angle in a futile effort to understand what happened. Asking questions no one can answer. Picking apart angles that no longer matter. Dealing with anything but the hardcore reality of the situation at hand. On some level, I know she finds the distraction comforting.

Were they too busy catching up? Trading stories about the old neighborhood? Planning their next vacation together? How do you miss something that obvious? It’s your fucking job.

Of all people, a golfing buddy, the radiologist, called it. He stopped everything, right there on the green of the eighth and wanted to hear it all again but with more details. Then he called an oncologist he knew and asked for a favor.

Stage four. Metastasized to the brain and lymph nodes. Game over.

They say her dad has six months to live. I give him three.

I got my first boner in jail.

Foster Mother drove me upstate to visit my father. He had been convicted six weeks earlier. He pled guilty, by the way. Guilty, guilty, guilty. Sentenced to life in prison instead of the death penalty for whatever lefty, liberal reason. I didn’t go to the trial. Wasn’t allowed to. I was told it would have been too traumatic. As opposed to what I saw at home? Doubtful, but the choice wasn’t mine. So I hadn’t seen him since he was taken away in a cruiser months earlier.

He had lost weight. And hair. Really, he looked terrible. Not that it was any of her business, but on the way home Foster Mother said that guilt can be a powerful thing. Ah ha. She never mentioned whom she had murdered so I’m not sure how she became such an expert on the subject.

The prison was minimum security. No fences or gates and I couldn’t help overhearing another family remark repeatedly that it was a lovely (not their word) facility (not their word). This was in comparison to other prisons and/or jails in which they had visited loved ones. I couldn’t help overhearing these comments because the lobby is all painted cinderblock and slick tile and nothing is quiet in there including their enthusiastic review of the place and the matriarch’s amazement that she could wear a bra with an underwire past security. Metal detectors elsewhere usually caused her no small degree of aggravation but she had big tits so what are you going to do?