Fragile (19 page)

The halo of my Soul expands and comes before my judgement. Did I waste the seconds that make up the hours? Did I turn away from mercy? Did I vainly wince and sunken down go feeble, did I shrink away from my talents? Did I perpetuate the race? Did I hold to books instead of friendships? Did I leave my fading hopes untendered from my ancient Soul? Both yes and no.

A fierce unbending light pours forth from me, from the portion that is nothing but a sleepless, commanding eye: This judging, analyzing part of me is my Spirit. This judgement is atoning for the waste, a glare of light that shines unmindful, ever watchful and commanding.

And what is judged, the halo of my all, my deep-known, sleep-known self: This is my Soul.

They watch each other here at last, my Spirit and my Soul. They entertain one last enduring mystery here. They assemble one last time for fullness, soothing happiness, a bursting cycle of voluble connection. My Soul, untendered, is joined unto my
Spirit, to the glare of light that shines unmindful, ever watchful. One judgement more, one final deep abomination, one burning, glamorous candidate for a deep and heavy headache, Holly sits up in bed and looks for something to drink. There is a glass of old water from the night before or maybe several days ago, before she went into the hospital. She takes it up and drinks from it, a sip and then a gulp. And she turns to find that he is still there, rolled up in a ball with his back turned away, his enduring perfectly socketed back. The amazing back. What is she to do with him now that it is Monday and she is home and her girls are not home, they are in the home of another man while this man is here with her. At least it is Monday, she is not missing any more work. She stares at the bandage on her wrist; a spot of brown where the blood wore through, it needs to be changed. Could she take it off and go to work tomorrow? Or maybe wear a long-sleeved blouse, something light enough to be comfortable even in the August heat.

The air conditioning kicks in, the rising air slashing at the window blinds gives her a chill and she recoils into the blankets once again, nudging him awake. Scent of sleeping bodies washing over her, scent of sex. He grumbles and rolls over, eyes still shut against the noonday light. Reaching out, his arms instinctively intertwine with hers and they collapse into clinging misalignment. His hardness is reassuring. He is always hard, every part of him. His free top hand explores her lower back and the slight paired indentations where the cleft between her buttocks begins. This could be good, having him here in the morning for
a change, first time this has ever happened. She allows herself to be drawn in closer, pressing her breasts against him, this is the only family she has today. Her head feels as if a sea of black smooth oil is washing against the walls of her skull, a neutral pounding with every movement. She could make him stop and bring her some aspirin. But he never stops, he never wants to stop.

“I bet that limp-wrist Tom doesn't give it to you like this.”

The whispered words come to her confused, far away, muffled by a layer of her own fine hair and the pliable mass of the pillow. He would be perfect, the perfect man, if he never opened his mouth. If only he would keep his mouth shut, she could keep him around for a while.

She pulls her head away from him and looks at his face. Long nose, thin and aquiline. Dark eyebrows nearly grown together above it. Mouth and lips that know how to make her move. Hair close-cropped stubble receding from the brow. And eyes that look back to her with challenging half-masked fear and derision. He has been as beaten-down by life as she has, she can see that in his eyes.

“You want him, go ahead. Just because he buys you things, rides you around in his car.”

Why is he saying these things, why now? He must know her better than she realizes. His understanding is pure animal and instinctual, conveyed by sense of touch, from his hands and arms and thighs locked around her. He must have felt that she was missing Zoe and Jenny.

“What are you talking about? I never said anything about him.”

“Yes you did. At the hospital. Telling me that he is taking care of your girls, your precious girls. So what?” His eyes plunge into floating broken anger. “You never even let me see them—not once.”

Again she considers how his absolute animal knowledge has drilled straight to the heart of the issue, to an understanding subliminal and dispersed. She has not consciously kept the girls from him, but now that he has said this, she realizes that she has until now never let him set foot in her apartment, and perhaps he has seen the reason all too clearly.

“That's not true, you could see them if you want.” She has to tread carefully around the variations that could arise from this. It could go any number of ways. “It's just that … we always meet late, after work. The kids are home asleep or at the sitter's house.”

“Why wouldn't you want me to see them? Here you are living in this two-bedroom dump of a place, cutting hair for a living, your head so screwed up you don't even mind if I crack it in two, and yet …” He gropes for a word; he isn't used to making such a lengthy speech. “The only one good enough to see your precious darlings is limp-wrist Tom. You had it all planned out, didn't you?”

“What are you talking about? It wasn't my choice to end up in the hospital and have him come charging over to save me.”

“Sure it was. Everything is your choice.” He removes his arm from under her waist and sits up in the bed. “Listen Holly.
I need a place to stay, for a few days at least. My landlord, they kicked me out. Too many rubber checks.”

So that's it. No wonder he didn't want to go to his place. Her mind calculating precisely the next actions that must be taken, the ramifications of her very next words. She envisions him waking up here in bed with her day after day, a strange man in the house when the girls go to the kitchen for their cereal. No, he cannot stay here, this place is for her and for her girls, he must go with a cataclysm that ripped the earth and sky completely apart. My Soul and my Spirit ripped in two, the reflection of me undone. My Spirit sees and understands what is happening in a cold, analytical way. My Soul stumbles along in a trance of wonder, circling round about itself. My Spirit is the light that shines inside, pure consciousness, forever watching whatever comes its way; and my Soul records every single thing the Spirit hears and sees and feels, faithfully balling it up into a proud and hopeful, scared and dream-distorted memory. And now, these two parts of me are ripped apart.

Spirit sees what the Soul can no longer register: After about forty-eight hours of no blood to the corpus collossum—the short, leathery band of tissue connecting the two hemispheres of the brain—it no longer provides the Soul and Spirit with the interface they shared in the physical world. The final tenuous link to the body is broken, and so, the majestic mind of Amelia Geist is torn in two. This is the Second Death.

Spirit stares immaculate, unmindful, stares and watches the veil of blackness descend. There is no here, no anywhere but
outsetting vastness encompassed all in darkness. Spirit watches and stares, alone. Amazed in silent ancient fear, dead stars are ripped apart. Two things that always worked together, that must behave as one, are ripped apart. Folds of leather tissue in the skull go dry and fall apart. The tomb in Palestine stands empty, thrown open to a world where earth and sky rebuke each other. Their postures echo and resound with the final crack of heaven splitting in a dream.

Spirit is pure consciousness, immaculate and empty. It sees that Amelia's Soul is holding fast to the life it left behind. Amelia's Soul is stuck in the world, still clinging to the things it loves and hopes for. The Soul is pure feeling, it cannot analyze what has happened to it and understand. It cannot comprehend that Amelia is no longer alive, because to this dreamlike sphere of pure emotion, Amelia and everything that made her up is all there ever was and ever is. It lingers there, clutching the earth and all its pleasures, doubts, and fears. And if it does not let go, it will remain there—stuck, a forlorn and haunting presence, another broken fragment of life that Spirit left behind.

Spirit has an impulse to reach out, to bring Amelia's Soul back and make itself whole again. But nothing moves here, no thing unfolds, there is no temperature to comfort. There is no time, no moment after moment, there is only Spirit, unbounded and everlasting, who watches and stares, and in another place there is also my Soul, my deep-known, sleep-known self, still wondering about me, still circled back upon the me that ever was and has been.

My garden awaits. Here all places are as one, so here is my garden, flowers draping over me, tender fronds of snaps. The stalks and stems lift all about me. Here is dirt still damp and wet. Red dusk globes of cone flowers, tender fronds of snaps on gabbling stalks surround me, luminous lavender and bronze. Here is my garden, my plot of earth, my pinoak great observant.

Inside my home, the dining room has my breakfront with my pictures, plates, and keepsakes still inside. These are plates we ate on thirty, forty years ago, Elmer, Father, and Louise, Karl and me and Dennis. The porcelain vase is gone, but where is it? The porcelain vase is gone.

In the living room, I brush past the frayed and weathered chair where I sit and watch the shows here by the window. And Enrique on the porch, on his metal chair he watches the street with the chain-link fence in front. I touch his shoulder, his wrinkled shirt, to let him know I am here. He doesn't see me—he does not feel.

Enrique looks to the yard and the street, but not to me. My words come out, but he does not hear. He hears instead the telephone ring inside his house. He gets up and turns past me, not seeing, opens the door and goes inside. The phone keeps ringing, and Holly sits up in bed to answer it, and he is still here. She answers the phone cradling the receiver between her chin and shoulder as she reaches for a cigarette.

“Yes?”

“Is this Holly Schenk?”

“Who's calling?”

“This is McEnbreit and Flannerty mortuary. Am I speaking to Holly Schenk?”

“Yes. What is this … regarding?” She lights the cigarette and brings it to her lips. “I'm not interested, whatever you're selling.”

“No ma'am. We're not selling. We were given your name as a hairdresser to style the hair of a deceased person in preparation for final viewing—by special request.”

“Whose request?”

“Request of the deceased. We sometimes get a request for a favorite hairdresser to style a person's hair. In this case, Amelia Geist informed us, as it turns out, the day before she passed away.”

“What on earth are you talking about? I'm not going to…” But then she looks at him lying there in bed, his dark eyes hooded, thick, staring at her, and sees she has an excuse to leave. She wasn't expecting to leave him today, but she has always known how to push someone away when they get too close to her—even her own girls at times, when they demand too much, especially Zoe, who sometimes clings and needs more attention. When she feels oppressed by them she must escape. She deposits the burning cigarette in the ceramic art class whale Zoe made at school, which serves as a makeshift ashtray on the bedside table. For an instant Holly wonders: Do whales have teeth? Zoe's thumbprints are clearly visible around the mouth hole, each separate impression of the thumb designed to provide the whale a tooth.

Holly's underwear and bra are on the floor where she dropped them. A floral-pattern blouse and jeans are there too—the clothes she was wearing when she entered the hospital, the ones she wore when she left, one sleeve of the blouse still spattered with blood. They will have to do. Pulling the jeans on, she sees that Rick was ahead of her in his understanding. Having him here in the apartment, in her own bed, was going too far. Rick had been a means of escape for her, but having him here in her own bed, making demands, has transformed him into another obligation, another trap to hold her. And she also senses that she has finally found her own level: Whereas Tom was too good for her, this man is not good enough.

“What are you doing?”

She hesitates as her mind constructs an answer. The words that come out surprise her. “I'm going to help a friend.”

“Get your ass back in bed.” He is up quickly. He is taller than she is, his physical presence is intimidating; but the most shocking thing about him, the thing that might make her stay, is his eyes. They look at her in disbelief, like the eyes of a dog that has been left at the side of the road by its owner.

She turns towards the door, and his hand is on her in an instant. He is holding onto her wrist hard enough to hurt, squeezing as if he wants to crush the blood out of her. But this grip he has on her flayed and bandaged wrist is the last time he will ever touch her, and he must know it. He has overstepped the boundary.

“It's time to let me
go to Louise's house. Her house is as it was and ever shall be. Here the cupboards overlook the sink, the kitchen window, and all is buffeted by shadows creeping from the trees. It is summer still, it is still a hot and hangworn day outside, with branches full of leaves that overlook the steep and shaded hill with the creek far below in the distance, beautiful to see.

Louise has lived in Bremerton since she was gone and off to college, first college girl in the family, and never let us forget it. When she came home from school for Christmas break, her forehead high as her bosom, she was always reading books and studying for the next exam and writing papers. All she did was read and write and talk of what she would do after college, after graduate school. She was going to be what none of us could be, she was always smarter than the rest. But here she is, still in Bremerton, still stuck in the woods with her books.

This hallway leads to bedrooms and a bath. It is a cottage in the woods, dark-lit, only shadows from the noonday trees here tower over, block the sun. The bathroom has a sink, a vanity with her things, her lotions, soap, and towels. What does water feel like? Warm and slippery, a tub, a sink; the tap is open, water, warm and slippery. Threadbare towels, all things are worn, all here and now is worn and wrought of simpler stuff, and still to me is lovely.