Between the blinks of the Christmas lights wrapped around my windows, an intermittent astronomy flashes above me. Lights on, stars off. Lights off, stars on. Peaceful. Almost enough to distract my fear.
December: pretty late in the year for there not to be snow. One-thirty: pretty late at night for me to be sprawled on my back on my front lawn with only a pair of boxer shorts and my robe on. But don't worry: the neighbors are all asleep. Besides, they already know I'm weird. They've seen me piss on the tree in my backyard during a summer barbecue instead of going inside because I was drunk. They've seen me in the driveway, working on my hobby car, talking to it, promising it a new set of spark plugs if the clutch would just work right. They don't seem to care what I do as long as I don't talk to them.
My sister is in the hospital. She was pregnant, but that's not exactly why she's in there. She's in there because of Dirk. Dirk, dork, dick, dirt, jerk. Son of a bitch. I'd kill him if I was back east. I'd break both of his arms and smash his kneecaps with a bat and hold him up by his tender throat and say to him, Why the hell'd you hurt my sister? and he'd be crying, looking in my eyes which would never let him live, and he'd say some crap about he was sorry and didn't mean it and Please, man, don't hurt me! but I'd be shaking with rage and he hurt my sister and I would kill him.
She might lose her baby.
Shooting star. It made a streak all the way across Orion's shoulders. Orion's above me. Legs spread and arms over his head, just like me, projected into the universe. Transposed. Or maybe I'm him focussed on the ground. Doesn't matter. There's one up there and one down here, and we never talk anyway.
I have my cordless phone right next to me. I could call him and say, Hey, Orion, Baby! Long time no see, man. Let's get together, have a few beers, shoot some pool, shoot the shit. But I think maybe he's got caller i.d. and doesn't want to talk to me. He knows how I spend my Sundays, playing pool or fishing or laying in bed with my girlfriend until early afternoon, and he decides he ain't got time for my kind, you know. Fine by me. I ain't got time for him, either.
Besides, the phone's so Mom can call.
He jumped right on her. She's eight months pregnant and cleaning his house and doing his dishes and letting him stab himself into her, and it ain't enough for him. He needs to be a man. Needs to show he's tough. So he slaps her around. He slaps my sister, and maybe belts her with his knuckles, too, and he pushes her and knocks her around and then when she's on the floor crying because he's such a bastard, he jumps right on her stomach, right on her baby, right on his own son.
If it wouldn't have been so late, and I could have got a ticket, I'd be on a plane and me and Dirk would be talking soon. But someone needs to talk to my sister, too, Orion. Someone needs to remind her that she got straight A's in high school, and that she was doing fine in the junior college before this prick showed up, and that she's very wonderful -- because she is. Someone needs to give her back her self-respect. Right now, though, someone just needs to let her keep her baby.
There's that phone next to me, and I think maybe I could call him and he would answer and he could let her keep the baby. And I wouldn't mind calling, either, except I'm afraid of maybe blowing her chances because I'm not the right person to be calling and asking.
Once, I was snorkeling, and I decided to lay on my back on the bottom of the sea, and I pulled off my snorkel, then exhaled, and the air bubbles rising through the water looked just like my breath rising above me now. Only now it's slower. Now it doesn't want to leave me so desperately. Now isn't as frivolous, like looking up from the bottom of a glass of champagne.
Inside my house, there's a fire in the wood burning stove. The smoke rises from the chimney like my breath from me. Cautiously, slowly, like it's making sure no one needs it before it leaves.
The Christmas lights keep winking. Quiet. All that motion of red and green, yellow, orange, blue, and nothing but stillness. Nothing distant, nothing close, nothing moving, nothing alive. Quiet. No neighbors, no cars, no airplanes, no television, not even me. Quiet.
No phone ring, either.
I probably won't fly out there. I want to. There's a something in me that tastes like blood and is ready to erupt and is restless, anxious, restless. But to let it loose would just make things worse. My sister needs her rest, and everything needs to settle, and she couldn't bear me killing someone -- and I really would kill him.
No, that wouldn't help any. So I'll leave it to you to take care of him. But first, couldn't you take care of Sis?
They're taking the baby out because it isn't breathing right. Mom made it sound a little trickier than a normal operation because they've got to watch the breathing and all. Not breathing, really, but -- what do you call it -- respiration! -- the lungs. Can hardly breathe when you're inside someone. Can hardly breathe when Orion's above you and the phone won't ring, and maybe he's sitting on the edge of his cloud, waiting for my call. Distraught. Just like me. Why don't you pick up the phone?
No moon, either. It's vacationing over Lebanon right now.
Maybe I should go inside. The Christmas lights blink an eerie but warm Morse code invitation for me to put my feet in front of the fire, have a sip of hot chocolate -- with just a touch of butterscotch schnapps -- watch the news channel and see how the Bears did today. I should go in before I'm paralyzed out here. Numb.
But I can't. It's like. . . it's like a staring contest. I can't take my eyes off him. He's watching me, too. One of us has to give in.
It's the dumbest thing, and I haven't thought of it for years, but now it's stuck in my head. When I was nine and she was six, we were in the backyard one day and I took her favorite doll away from her. She cried and bawled and I kept teasing her, laughing. I was taller and she couldn't reach the doll as I held it above my head. She calmed down and asked me politely if she could have her doll back. I considered it. She had surrendered. I had won. I should have given it back. But instead I pulled its stupid arm off and waved it in front of my sister's face. She shrieked and whirled around and ran inside to tell while I hid behind a tree and tried to put that damned arm back on, but I had ruined it.
When Mom came out, I got a few swats -- but Mom's swats never hurt. And then she told me I had to pay for a new doll out of my allowance. But my sister wouldn't let me. It wasn't a doll, she kept saying as she cried. It was her baby. Hell, I never knew she loved her toys like that. I felt like shit for a long time.
Well, Dirk, how about you? You feel like shit, you bastard? How about it, Dirk. . . you gonna buy her a new baby now?
You must have a good view from up there. How many eyes does it take, I used to wonder, to watch all of our minute lives? And how could you keep track of it all? So I guess it must be me reflecting you down here, because I can't even imagine the answers to these questions. But, you know, when you're a kid you just forget -- or never knew or couldn't understand in the first place -- that a half-dozen billion other people are living on this planet, and you figure yours is the only life being watched. Being really watched. Every thing you do, even when you're in the room with your door shut, being quiet so your parents can't hear, even then, you recall that someone's got a bird's-eye view.
It must be nice.
That's what I thought. I thought it must be nice to see Amy Peterson get undressed at night. I thought you got to see all the good stuff. And then suddenly I was twenty-two, and I figured out, without having thought about it for years, that that's not what you see. Your vision is different -- in ways I don't understand. Our hearts are what you see. So I looked inside my own heart to share the view, but it was like looking at a national park forest burned and littered. Not a blossom anywhere. Not a sapling of hope. I thought, Jesus, how am I gonna ever restore all that? And I am still so ashamed that I've just closed the park down.
Slowly, now. The world turns slowly. Breath drifts away like an evaporating wish. Dissipates. Disappears. Grey-mist-hope and crisp-air-reality. Shaken, not stirred. Slowly, slowly. Cautious, calm.
I'd offer you a beer, but you're already exalted. What can I get you? What can I do for you? Isn't there something? Listen, I'll make you a deal. I could quit hating if you would give in. How about it? Talk to me, and I'll never swear again. Come on. It can't be that tough. Just wave at me, wink at me, blow me a kiss, and I'll do nothing but love for all my life. Send me a letter, visit me, let me know you know my name, and I'll praise you forever.
Please? Just stop being so silent. Can you hear me? Please.
Save my sister's baby, and I'll give in. You can win again. You can stay quiet and hidden and never drop a line. It's all right. You can love me or leave me or laugh in my face. All right? I never meant to disappoint you. If I had known then how all your time is spent watching your loved ones fail, I would've done everything I could to have saved you the added disappointment of my mistakes. I would have tried to have made you proud, just like a father.
See this? See my face? I can feel tears running toward my ears, wanting to freeze. And I've started shaking. I've been out here for over an hour, and only now I'm shaking. Come on! What do you want?
. . . No answer.
The phone sleeps next to me annoyingly. It's like when you're awake in the middle of the night and your wife's asleep and you want to "accidentally" wake her up so you have someone to talk to. Doesn't work with phones, though. They wake up when they want to. Like babies.
My fire is dying. My chimney is out of breath. The last wraith of smoke floats toward a star ten thousand light years above me to tell it that I'm down here waiting. By then it might be a little too late.
Something in me wants to believe. Did you know that? Something tells me that since I'm talking to you I do believe. And I want to ask you every five seconds to make the phone ring and let me hear that everything's all right so that when it does ring I will have just asked you and then I can say that you did it. See? I want to believe. Really. But I can't.
I don't know if it's because I work every day for what I have, and I don't want to admit that I should be spending more time looking after my soul instead, or if it's because I've done so much that's wrong that if I did believe, it would mean I'd have to be guilty, or what. I don't know if maybe it's because you can't love me.
I want to make you a promise though, so you'll make everything all right, and I can earn your love. I want to be humble -- in a proud way. I want to know that my humility made you do something. But I guess that's not the kind of humility you look for.
So I'm stuck knowing I can't buy miracles or twist your mighty arm, and that I've never been your best friend, so I don't deserve any favors. And I wish I could live again and have faith. I wish I could learn to believe in words if only so that now I wouldn't be crying in the cold wishing...wishing...wishing for you to love me enough to save my sister's baby. And I wish there was a bargain I could make, but I know the child will die tonight.
And I want to be dead so it can live.
All my breath leaves me, alone on the sea-floor, my tears adding infinitesimally, insignificantly to the indifferent swirls around me. My whole life exhaled. The useless body starts to rise, as if buoyant, as if the air and light above beckoned it. And I am cold, and I am lonely, and I am leaving behind this world completely empty. I have failed.
...Then it rings.
Despite the cold, I spring up and grab the receiver. But I can't pick it up. It rings again, sharply, like a frightened baby needing to be held in the night. I don't want to hear this. Please, make it all right. Just care for us and love us enough to make everything all right. Please. . . God?
On the fourth ring I lift the receiver to my ear. "Hello" is all I can say.
Mom's crying, but it's a good cry. Sis is all right, and the baby, too. It'll have to stay in the hospital for awhile, though. And the police are looking for Dirk. (Please, use your billy-clubs when you find him.) Mom says she wants to get home and get some sleep. She'll phone tomorrow.
I exhale a plume of anxiety. I can go in now.
Well, you've done it. You've made me feel absolutely worthless. I mean, I started as nothing, and then you gave me something I could never be worthy of. I hope you're laughing your can off.
As I stretch, I see there's frost on the ground, except where I lay. I'm going to turn off those blinkin' lights and box them back up. I don't want to see another Christmas light all year. I open my door and feel the lingering warmth embrace me, yet I have to stop. I'm crying again, but it's a good cry. I can't think of one redeeming aspect about me, yet the only omniscient Being in the universe reached down and decided...
...Thank you.
Copyright 1998
Eric Prochaska