The Sea-Wave (13 page)

I
couldn't believe what was happening. I'd been out so long and away from everything. I thought maybe I was going crazy.

I woke up. It was nighttime. You could hardly see anything but the old man was still moving. It felt like he was pushing me uphill because of the pressure of my head against the headrest.

I closed my eyes again. I couldn't see anything. The pushing got slower as the hill got steeper. The old man was really puffing. I was worried he'd drop dead, then I'd roll back over him and tip over. There might be coyo­tes.

I heard something. It got louder as we went along. It sounded like music —
but it couldn't be music.
I hadn't had much water or sleep.
A hallucination
.

It sounded like Handel or Mozart. Then I was sure it was Mozart. It was a divertimento. I have a CD of divertimentos.

There were lights on the other side of the hill. The old man slowed down but kept pushing me. The music got louder as the lights got brighter. It was like there was a crown on top of the hill. Then we were on top of the crown.

For a minute I thought I was dead though I'm not Christian. I'd been moving to the light and there was music. And then all these people. There were maybe five hundred people sitting and standing at the bottom of the hill. It was like a small valley filled with people. There was a symphony on a stage. The lights were shining on a banner that read: “SYMPHONY UNDER THE STARS.” My parents had taken me to something like this years ago, maybe even in this same spot. For a while they thought it was important to nourish my brain.

It was so amazing to hear music again I almost cried. I was so thirsty and this was as good as water.

The old man stopped pushing me. I think he was listening to the music. He stepped up to a tree. He put his arms around it and looked down at the lights and the people. Then he sat in the grass and looked and listened. He put his head back like he was in ecstasy.

We sat there for close to an hour. They played Schubert and a few movie themes. Then everyone clapped and started walking away. The musicians packed up their instruments. The conductor held his hand above his eyes and looked up at us almost like he could see something. Then he turned and walked away with the rest.

The old man jumped up and pushed me down the side of the hill into a new area of darkness.

I wondered . . .

Will I ever hear music again?

I
can't forget. Your memory helps you but it kills you too. It picks you up and it drops you. It's your depressed mom who loves you and wishes you were dead.

My mom gets me into my chair. I sleep with my head at the foot of the bed so it's easier for her, my dad leaves early, to pull me straight back into my chair. When your mom's grunting under you, you can't forget you're a flour bag. When you move your hand and it doesn't move how you
need
it to. When you rest it on your armrest, press a button. Everything reminds you.

But I want
to forget. I want to lay back in the grass and not think about the million strands of grass, but just
relax
. I want that so bad. It's a dream, it keeps me going. If I could forget for just a minute. It's sad but it's my dream.

It's better than nothing.

Y
ears, appeared. They merely appeared. I lay them . . . on the table. And counted them.

I have my freedom
.

But I did not have my freedom.

When you are imprisoned, it is your skin, and
some other thing
, which are imprisoned. A small thing: a particle. There are so many elements in a chemical. Remove one, and it is some other thing. It is not the chemical. It is nothing.

I now had my freedom. But I wanted
a particle
. The other thing. It remained in prison. Lying, by the next condemned man. As a facing page.

It will lie there, forever.

J
ust thinking about my mom . . . I've thrown up before. She's not what you'd call motherly. She never really held me. I've heard her say: “I'm not a baby person.” But you
had
a baby, Mom. I imagine her reading magazines, and my dad holding me, looking worried and sad.

No one holds me now. I sit in my corner. Mom reads magazines, Dad sits attached to his paper, like a sad fly.

I don't think having a damaged kid really killed my mom. But it
murdered
my dad. He's never said that, but . . .

I can tell.

M
y one hobby is observation. I wheel right up to the margin till my feet touch the red line and I sit there and stare. I make my observations, I write them down. When you're old especially, life has to be just an album of observations; you turn the pages all day until your arthritis aches. When you're a wheeler, that's really all life is, too. You've gotta hold onto things or you'll have nothing. And you already have so little.

T
he point of conversation is to stop a person's words from ever getting out of their mouth. Someone talking is that foam sealant that keeps the listening person's words from leaking out. If they do get out, maybe there was too much space between your words, you have to cut them off like sausages and cram them back in. If the person talks about their new business, you tell them how it's so very likely in today's economy to fail. You push the words down their throat past the epiglottis until they choke to death. Then you go on talking.

T
he old man has a tattoo on his forearm. Something with claws, a lion or a dragon. He rolled his sleeves up when I thought he was going to try climbing this dead tree. But he just pushed on it like he wanted to topple it. It was dead but not dead enough. He gave up.

He pushed me for a while, then stopped at another tree. There were a lot of white dead trees in this area which I think comes from flooding. This one went down easy. It smashed on the ground and bits of branches went everywhere. One scratched me on the cheek hard. I touched it but there wasn't any blood.

I watched the old man picking up branches and dropping them for a long time. He picked up one long one and whacked it on the ground till the fragile bits snapped off. Then he tested his weight on it. I assumed he wanted a walking-stick. Though he hasn't used it yet. He just rests it across my handlebars and holds onto it and pushes me at the same time.

I'm not sure what he's up to.

T
he glass jar my mom throws pennies in plays the wedding waltz when you open it. You just have to wind a key in the lid. When I was younger, when my mom rolled her pennies, it was my job to wind up the jar. When I heard the wedding waltz I knew my presence was needed. It made me feel needed. It was something I could do usually without help. It was important. Small things keep you going.

Over time the jar stopped working. The music got so slow it was chilling. I'd feel suspense. I'd imagine skeletons dancing. My parents seemed happier when they were younger.

Once when I wound the jar it went
clank
and died. “Look what you've done,” Mom said. She didn't need me after that. She rolls the pennies herself now, in silence.

But sometimes when she opens the jar it still makes one
ding
like a last gasp of romance. I can hear it even from my room. It reminds me of how things were. I used to — I'd get so sad. I'd close my eyes for a long time. But not anymore.

I stopped winding my heart up a long time ago.