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More things in Heaven and Earth
The Spanish Moss is a drape that I almost have to push aside. It hangs low and it hangs far, but I duck down just enough to avoid touching the stuff. Redbugs live in the hairy clumps, and tourists usually don't find out about that little treat until they're reaching for calamine lotion or Benadryl.
From where I stand in the thick, mossy woods, I can see a river. It reminds me of sweet tea under the sunshine, slipping towards the sea. On the opposite bank, I watch a boy climb up onto steel stairs. He scrambles, straightens, and steps over to the floating wooden dock. Above him, perched on the stairs, is an older woman smoking a cigarette. She looks out into the quiet woods, her eyes hidden behind glaring glasses. The afternoon is brutally hot, but she doesn't mind. Ashes flicked into the current flow downstream while smoke curls upward.
The boy perches, toes over the edge, hands up above his head. He dives, arching high enough to avoid hitting the green johnboat moored along the dock. He surfaces, wiping water from his face as his knees plant on the sandy river bottom.
The boy crawls along until the water grows ever more shallow, leading to a sandbar. There, the river gives him everything he needs to build a sandcastle. It isn't elegant, it doesn't hold together well, but he scoops and stacks anyway.
"Let's get ready for supper," the woman says, stubbing out her More on the steel steps. She stands, the butt between fingers to toss into an ashtray on the porch.
"Okay!" The boy yells, abandoning his construction project and running back into the water. He takes his time in the deeper part of the river, savoring the cool, flowing water for another minute before finishing his journey up the stairs.
I watch them both walk towards a large porch attached to a small singlewide mobile home. Doors open, slam shut, and close for good.
The trailer is smaller than I remember, and the large porch really isn't.
The boy isn't as big as I remember him being, but he's plenty portly.
His grandmother doesn't look sick yet.
Spanish moss isn't the only thing clouding my vision, and it isn't sweat running into my eyes.
I turn away, and reopen the door to anywhere.
When I pop back into the bedroom I know as the "now," a voice greets me.
"That's what you choose? In all of human history, any time, any place, you pick a place nowhere special in a year no one remembers?"
The voice isn't mocking, it's incredulous.
I wipe the tears from my eyes and laugh. Sobs follow, and I have a hard time breathing.
When I can speak, my voice is a hoarse shell of normal. "I don't know who you are, where you're from, or why you're here, but thank you."
"You don't believe you've squandered this gift?" Again, the tone strikes me not as insulting, but mellow, curious, with a hint of awe.
"If you're here, then there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in philosophy."
"I don't understand humans."
"What if Heaven is what we make it, and that door of yours showed me mine?"
"You were a peeping tom in your own timeline. Peering through a forested riverbank, stealing glances of you and your grandmother. I give you an opportunity people only dream of, and your choice is...unique."
"Is it? I'm not special. I'm not unique. I'm just a boy who wants to swim in the river with his grandmother again."
With an audible snap that is felt more than heard, the djinn is gone, but memories still remain.
Swimmers
I think I was in the third grade when we got our first above-ground pool. I'm not sure where it came from, but it's possible it was Wal-Mart. It was a tiny little thing, only three feet deep and made of green flimsy plastic held together with steel struts.
My dad put the thing together by himself, if I recall. It didn't take him long.
We used it a lot that summer, and when summer was over, it was torn down and thrown away. Turns out, it was a cheap investment to see if we'd actually use a swimming pool beyond the novelty phase.
That following spring, we got a much larger, much nicer pool professionally installed by the company that sold it to us. My dad and one of our family friends dug and leveled the pad for it, and I remember him complaining that it was a lot of work compared to the other one.
We used that above-ground pool until my parents divorced and they both moved away. I ignored it, left it covered, didn't give the first shit about it. When my mom came home with her new husband, one of the first orders of business was to get it back up and running. Turns out, "up and running" really meant completely replacing.
There may have been bullet holes in the sidewall.
Hey, man, what can I say? College was sometimes crazy.
I have two very distinct, very different sets of memories around that pool. Both sets are great, and I waver on which one I appreciate more.
The first group of memories surround horseplay in my young teen years. My best friends would come over, and we'd wrestle, play "water polo" with a soccer ball and a round ring inflatable, and just generally goof off. Sometimes my mom would get in on it, and we'd have all-out athletic days getting water-logged and sunburned.
The other set of memories were wrapped in a blue and purple bikini. God, she was beautiful. We'd go swimming on some of those afternoons she'd visit; Sundays were our days. I'd pick her up around noon and she had a strict 9pm curfew. Those nine hours were the best ones of the week.
That collection of nine-hour days are some of the best hours of my life.
During swim season, before credit cards and hotels, that swimming pool was the closest thing to naked we could get. We could "wrestle" and horseplay and sometimes sneak in kisses.
Handjobs in crystal clear waters sure do look cool in that special moment at the end.
My mom used to remind us that "girls can get pregnant in pools, don't forget that," but we rolled our eyes and ducked down behind the sidewall where we couldn't be seen from the house.
I'm pretty sure my grandfather knew what we were doing. He'd sit on his covered porch, smoking his pipe. Rocking in his chair, we could see his shadow, but never could see his face.
Funny, he always seemed to be interested in smoking that pipe on the porch when the blue and purple bikini came to visit.
Can't blame him. She was a gorgeous girl, and still is a gorgeous woman.
I remember the smell of chlorine on her skin and the feel of her hands all over me in those lazy summer afternoons.
There's still a swimming pool Back Home, but I have a hard time climbing the steps to the deck that surrounds it. Not because it's a physical challenge, but because that pool reminds me of better days.
Nostalgia is a powerful thing, but it's even stronger when what seems like it was a better time... really was.
May we live to 103
There's a greater than zero chance he'll be shot in bed by a jealous lover.
It's a tongue in cheek toast I've heard a thousand times in a hundred different Irish pubs, and I've often thought it wouldn't be a bad way to go. As I recall, the whole saying is "May we live to be 103 and die in our sleep, shot in bed by a jealous lover." The age varies, but the spirit is the same: geriatric and still scrompin'.
He isn't geriatric, but he's sure as hell scrompin'.
I noticed he was acting suspiciously a couple of months ago. The man who didn't even have a smartphone until work made him, the man who wouldn't text if his life depended on it, was glued to his black mirror that last time I saw him.
"I think he has a girlfriend," she confided out of the blue. I don't call as often as I should, and we went from discussing what was for dinner to this bombshell. There was no preamble, no smooth segue, no transition.
"What makes you think that?" I asked, carefully neutral. I did not share my suspicions or observations. What if she's right? What if she's wrong? What if she's right and decides not to do anything about it? I know better than to disturb marital bliss. Domestic disputes often turn against those in their orbit, and I'm trying to stay unscathed.
"I found pictures and messages." Ahh. Can't argue with that. "But the next day, after I saved them, they were gone."
"Did you actually save them?"
"I don't know. My mind is gone, you know that." It's true. I do. It is. But not all of it.
"So what's your next move?"
"I confronted him about it. I asked him to please just stop and love me for the time I have left."
She has maybe three years. Probably less. Definitely less with a broken heart.
"What did he say?"
"He denied everything. Said I was delusional. And it's possible I am."
"What is your end game? Your goal?"
"I want to be loved. Cared for. I just want him to keep his promise."
I do, too. I understand she's hard to live with, God knows I don't want to live with her, but it looks like I'll have to sooner than later. She isn't the woman I once knew, but she is still the woman who has known me my whole life. We used to be friends, and I miss those days. She never stopped being the parent, but for those few years of my early adulthood, we genuinely liked each other in addition to the familial love.
I'm not sure we like each other so much anymore.
"Mom, I got you. Tell me what you need me to do."
She cries, and it's the first time I've heard her sob since her sister died. Even then, it was the loss of a sibling more than the loss of the person her sibling was that sparked her grief.
"Nothing yet. Nothing yet. Don't be angry at him, don't treat him any differently. I had to tell somebody. I'm not sure I can live through this, and I'm not sure he will, either." She takes a breath, sighs. I hear so much sadness. "If he cuts it off, I can forgive him."
I can, too. She can't hear me nod, but I assure her. "I get it. I understand, and I'm here if you need me. You have to make the choices that are best for you, and I don't judge you for them."
"I'm not ready to go yet," she says, no longer crying. "But the years ahead of me aren't looking like ones I want, anyway."
Her husband should consider staying home, or that house might become a tomb.
I hope not.
I'm not sure what's scarier: the fact that murder might happen, or the fact that I'm not horrified that it may.
Rad
She wears a Def Leppard tee with a hole the size of a quarter along the collar seam. Black has faded to a dusky gray.
Dark blonde hair is slicked into a ponytail, held by an acid-washed denim headband. Bangs are an arched, moussed sentinel over her forehead. Ripped jeans, matching the headband, are tight rolled into her Reebok high tops.
She carries a purple Trapper Keeper covered in our initials done in whiteout and black sharpie.
She's as far away from me today as we were from Nagasaki then.
Some images burn into concrete while others etch into memory.
Bette
Her hands were never cold.
It didn't matter the time of year, or what we were doing, or where we were.
I've long heard the term "Harlow Gold." I didn't know what it meant until Google gave me the answer, but it fit perfectly, once I saw it. It's basically a white-blonde dye job. She didn't dye; she was simply the palest blonde I ever did see.
She wore her hair in a simple ponytail, mostly. Sometimes she'd try to tease it into a shape, with curls and whirls and whatnot, but mostly, it ended up held back with a simple elastic band.
I was always careful not to let her see me laugh on those days. I think that likely kept me from being stabbed.
She used to tease me, and sometimes, she knew how to make me blush. I didn't mind, though. In the end, I knew she'd let me take her home.
They hand me a folded blue piece of 8.5 x 11 when I walk in the door. It reminds me of the church bulletins from when I was a kid. I hate places like this little Primitive Baptist snuggled up between Savannah and nothing at all.
I always find it odd when they call it a Homecoming. If this is God's house like they say, then it was never really hers. It couldn't be, because she wasn't a hypocrite. Precocious, ferocious, but not pretentious or dishonest.
I recognize guys from our shared youth. Some of them knowingly nod at me. We all loved her, in our way and in our time. We each speak to the husband; she kept no secrets, and he thanks us for coming, even if he doesn't mean it.
I admit being a little uneasy. She was always good at that, and I suppose this is her last joke at my expense. I sit, staring at the back of the man she married while a stranger leads us all in prayer.
I smile and shed a tear. I can't help but wonder if she's as comfortable in her mahogany box as she was in any of the backseats from high school. I sigh, and it slips into a quiet sob.
Her hands were never cold in the back of my old Monaco, but now it's all they'll ever be.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SodT0FyebU
Ghosted
Sweat glistens; she smiles down at me. Eyes locked, hips rocked, we fight the air-conditioning, wrestling in tangled linens. She laughs, I flip her, she's pinned. My breathing changes and eyes glaze; she smiles, nodding, tells me to, but I'm already there.
Whitewash rolls down, but we will never have a picket fence. Her lips part in matching smiles. The bruise on her thigh is a beautiful contrast to the cream of her skin and on her skin.
Adele says we've gotta let go of our ghosts. That’s truth, but these ghosts in my sheets are a haunt I welcome.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fk4BbF7B29w
Tides and Wells
I know they can't even be an ounce, but the weight is so much more.
Two five by seven glossies, printed in a tourist trap kiosk. I paid a far higher price than I should have, but the cost hasn't yet been tallied.
Money is a tide, but memory is a well.
Wells sometimes run dry.
Her well isn't as deep as it once was.
I'm stricken by how much she looks like her grandmother. What strikes me even more is the possibility that she'll live as long.
I'm ashamed to admit that I hope she doesn't. Her independence is already gone, her mobility a thing of the past and her thoughts have started trailing after.
My great-grand was with us into my early twenties. She lived long enough to wither on the vine, mind as sharp as a razor but a body fragile as glass. When the light in her eyes began to dim, when her memory began to slip, her body had already started to go. It was an easy thing for her to follow.
My mother's mind started slipping by inches, and her body has declined by miles. Now it's a race to see which one will be gone first.
She knows she's in decline. She's fighting it, but she's losing.
Dialysis starts soon.
I took her on a bucket list trip last week; we originally had it planned for late summer.
Late summer will be too late.
The water was too cold, but she went anyway. She'd never stepped foot in the Caribbean, and now she has.
When I told her about the trip, the first thing she asked was if she could swim with dolphins.
"Absolutely you will," I told her.
And she did.
She hates having her photo taken, so while she was distracted with my step father, I moseyed over to the photo center.
She never asked what I had in the bag.
Two photographs, professionally captured, have her kissing or petting her very own personal Flipper. She watched that show when she was a kid, and half a century later, she finally got to swim with a bottlenose.
When it's her time to go, I'll probably be tasked with building an electronic photo reel. It will be hard to do, because she avoids cameras when she can. She always has.
I knew when I bought these pictures that eventually they'd be displayed in memoriam.
Carrying these photos back to my hotel room, I know they can't even be an ounce, but the weight is so much more.
Fame, not fortune
I learned one name on the evening news.
Surprisingly, pictures on milk cartons still happen. I recognized somebody and chuckled.
The stretch of I-90 west of Sioux Falls is interesting. It reminds me of movies with signs saying "last chance for gas!" but I guess the midwest figures fuck it, you'll figure it out. Lucky for me, that highway is a helluva place for pretty girls to have a flat.
Youtube has cold-case stuff on familiar faces. I know names from the driver's licenses stashed in my special place.
Sunday School lied. God ain't the only one who makes stars.