Spectacle: Stories (3 page)

Some mornings I note the rib cage. I note the organs seething beneath the rib cage. I note the fragility of what does not, at night, seem fragile.

Some mornings I am not the whore they want me to be.

I am not the killer they want me to be.

Some mornings I try to no avail. To absolutely no avail. To no avail I try, and they get up to make coffee, and I get up and step into my skirt, and I pull on my shirt and walk home.

And the woman performs happy woman on a sunny street.

The woman performs this all feels good this all feels really good.

The woman pulls it together. She pulls it tight. She further tightens that which tightens.

There were late nights he would call from a pay phone, a friend’s house, a hospital, and because it was late, and because I was not poor, and because I was not ferociously mad, but, rather, mad mad, a machine answered my phone and lied that I wasn’t there eating in bed, watching TV, lied that I would return the call.

The machine would then say, Hello, stranger.

The machine would then say, It’s your father, stranger.

There were voices in the background.

There was traffic in the background.

I’m okay, stranger, the machine would then say.

There was screaming in the background.

There was me in my bedroom.

Pick up the phone, the machine would say loudly.

I know you’re there, the machine would say louder.

There was me turning the TV all the way up.

There was every poor soul looking downward.

There was me not believing in the soul.

There was me waiting, counting seconds, staring at the wall.

My mother said good-bye and disconnected first. Then the doctor said good-bye and disconnected. After the doctor disconnected, there was silence, but I said, Hello. I was hoping my brother was still on the line. I wanted to laugh or something. I said hello again, but my brother had disconnected too.

And before I ran downstairs to the massive kitchen that was my kitchen, I sat on the edge of my bed, still holding the phone.

I imagined the doctor arriving home that morning.

I imagined the doctor taking off his scrubs, washing his hands, and climbing into bed with his beautiful wife.

I imagined him easing into his wife’s heat, the way I once eased into my ex’s heat.

Before we had a sense of what came next.

Before we had a sense that something came next.

Firefighting.

Warrensburg, Missouri.

Me in my bed eating cold lo mein.

Me eating egg rolls, watching TV.

You have to trust me.

There was no grand scheme.

I would quit my job. I would leave that place. I would cross the state line. I would cross another. I would cross another.

And here I am now in a different state.

There is the man digging through the trash.

There is the gem buried in the mess.

Listen. It was not a shit hole.

It was not that.

Call it what you will, but there were cowboys there, for God’s sake, standing on corners in the biggest hats you have ever seen.

There were tornadoes that would send you into space.

There were spiders that would necrotize your ass.

There was a sky turning light. The same sky as everywhere turning light.

Call it what you will, but there I was, same as you were, under that sky.

There I was, just some poor soul. Same as you.

When the plane crashed, I was all messed up. I was all kinds of all messed up. Because first we’d had drinks. Next we’d smoked. There were pills we’d taken from a bowl on the floor. The pills all did their different things. We liked not knowing what they would do. It didn’t matter which way we went.

When the plane crashed, I was on a couch. I was in this place, Club Midnight. It was where we went when it got too late. Or there was nowhere else to go. A guy was sitting next to me. He was a guy I knew from school. He was a guy I hardly knew. It didn’t matter that he was there. It was always a lot of us sitting there drinking. A lot of us always were sitting around.

There’s nothing to say about the guy. This is not the place for adjectives. I wasn’t even looking at him. The pills from the bowl had spilled to the floor. And no one was rushing to pick them up. I made no move to pick them up. I just sat there thinking they’d get crushed. I was waiting for the boot that would come to crush them. I was thinking of the sound the boot would make. I was thinking of the person attached to the boot. The beautiful person we all could blame.

At first the guy wasn’t looking at me. But when the plane was falling from the sky, I felt him writing on my arm. And before he could finish what he was writing, I said, Stop.

I don’t know how to tell the next part. It was like I knew a plane had crashed. Even though I was all messed up. Even though I was thousands of miles from the plane. It was like I had a premonition. Or I felt a reverberation. I mean I felt a crash push through my skin. Not from his pen. Not what you think. It was more like air pushing through. Or a song pushing through. It was more just like a ghost.

Winter was creeping in again. The holidays, again. I would not be doing much that year. The same thing I did every year. Going to my father’s house. Not eating what my father made. Staring at my father across the table staring at me. Glaring across the table because he never let me do a thing. My father, who thought he’d saved my life.

The other kids all studied abroad. They came back home all better than me. They knew things I didn’t know. There were lamp-lit roads they talked about. There were churches made of stone. There were whores in windows lit by red lights. I could see myself walking the lamp-lit roads. I could see myself small in a hollow church. I would be too far for my father to find. But my father said no to study abroad. You’re not ready, he said. You don’t study, he said.

It wasn’t technically a crash. It was technically an explosion. It was technically a fireball. Technically, it was a lot of things. What I mean is, it was meant.

It then took just the sound of a plane. Or a trail of smoke. Or a shadow moving fast and wide across grass. And the terrible way my brain worked. The way my brain said duck. And fast. And now. And I would lie in the snow. I would lie under trees. I would wait for the plane to pass overhead. Or for the smoke to disappear. Or for my brain to tell me, Get up. Or for the plane to crash.

I knew the chance of a crash was small. A plane would not likely drop from the sky. I would not likely be crushed on the ground. It was all of it unlikely. And I knew that it wasn’t just planes. That cars could swerve. That trains could derail. I’d once seen a bus that had gone off the road. It was upside down in a field. But this didn’t make me afraid of buses. Because there was something different about crashing on land. I mean it was different from crashing to land.

As a kid I wanted to walk a tightrope. I’d seen a circus on TV. I’d watched it with my father. I liked the tightrope walker most. I liked the thin stick he held on to. And how he stared ahead to the other side. And how he would make it clear to that other side. Or how, perhaps, he would not.

There were photos all over of the crash. It’s not enough to say raining metal. It’s not enough to say twisted metal. Or that the people on the ground were stuck in the storm. Or that I wasn’t there, of course, in the storm. Because I was thousands of miles away, of course. I was sitting around Club Midnight. And pills were spilled out onto the floor. And a guy was writing on my arm. He wrote the first four letters of my name. I imagine he planned to write the fifth. But I said, Stop.

There was a service in a church. I went because it was right to go. I went because everyone went. Before the service, we stood outside. Someone had something to smoke. Someone else had pills. We went to the service all messed up. I was too messed up to feel a thing. It wasn’t a big deal, being messed up. The whole world was a mess.

Then were the times lying flat in the snow. It didn’t make sense, my lying flat. I know this now. It would not have saved me, lying flat, from a storm of metal crashing.

To my friends I said, I’m fine. I said, I am. But they looked at me like, You’re not fine. But I am, I said. Because I was, I thought. Because I didn’t know her well enough to be anything other than fine.

The guy was laughing at me. I was too messed up to laugh. My tongue felt covered in fur. Clouds had formed, and I fell into them, one by one. I said, My tongue. I said, My God. I didn’t mean to say this. I didn’t mean to say anything. I didn’t want a conversation. It had started to snow, and I wanted to go outside. Because the snow just seemed like more than snow. It was something about the light. I didn’t know what it was. But the guy said, Your tongue, and laughed again. And then I was falling into him. And if I must use an adjective, right now, right here, I would use
beautiful.

I know I shouldn’t have been driving. The roads were a mess. Murder, my father would have said. Murder, every time it snowed. But there I was, rising from the couch. There I was, surrounded by clouds. Next I was in the driver’s seat. And there he was beside me. And there were the holiday lights in windows. And the lit-up trees in windows. And the reflection of my car. And the reflection of us inside the car. And there was my building. There were the stairs leading to my door.

I said I wanted to walk a tightrope. My father said, Do you want to be killed. I didn’t want to be killed. I wanted to be something else. I wanted to be between living and not living. Just for the time it would take to walk the tightrope. Just for the time it would take to make it to the other side. Or for the time it would take to fall. Over my dead body, my father said. I would go to school like everyone else. I would read and write like everyone else. I would graduate like everyone else. I would go to college. I would get a job. I would live in a house. I would have kids. And eventually I, like everyone else, would die.

There’s nothing to say about the service. Someone spoke. Then someone else spoke. Then someone played guitar. Because she played guitar. Because it’s how she would have wanted it. That’s what everyone said. She would have wanted it that way. As if anyone ever could really know. I hardly even knew the girl. She went to my school. I sometimes smoked with her after class. I sometimes saw her in Club Midnight. But it was always a lot of us drinking. It was her and it was the guy from the couch. It was others too, and we sometimes talked. And perhaps I lit her cigarette once. Perhaps she cupped her hands around mine. But she went off to study abroad. And I, as you know, did not.

In my bed we talked about who knows what. Those nouns that emerge in bed. What passes for deep. Life. God. I know you know how I must have felt. And at some point we just fell asleep. And while we were sleeping, saviors were being called upon. Saviors were showing up to help. Bodies were pulled from the wreckage. The scene was played and replayed and replayed. And we lay there.

But this story is not about the guy. He just happens to be in it. Like paint on the walls. Like sound in the air. Like hydrogen. Like oxygen.

It’s a miracle, my father said. I saved your life, he said. My father had food on his face. The TV droned in another room. The wine was almost gone. A holiday at my father’s house. A miracle, he said.

When the phone rang, my dreams were of ringing. And when I waked and answered, I meant not to answer. But there I was, saying hello. And there was someone else saying, Wait. Saying, Get up, get up. I already knew it was something big. I’d already had a premonition. If I were someone else, I would tell you more. I would tell you what I was told. But I’ll just say the world was then an open door letting cold air in.

And I’ll say it was like a supernova, how I thought of supernovas. A split second of silence. An explosion in the sky. Then a shooting outward and shooting outward. And some things landed. And some things burned. And some flew through clouds. Or fell through clouds. Or crashed into bodies they never knew until they crashed.

I’m sure the people in the bus all died. There was no way, the bus turned over like that, they did not. I wanted to drive out onto the field to see if I could help. But I kept on driving up the road. I had somewhere to be that night. There was no way I could have helped.

I kicked the guy awake. I said, You should leave. I said, Please leave. I said, Leave. And I left too. I watched the guy walk through the snow. I found my car parked terribly. I didn’t notice the tires at first. I didn’t see that two of the tires were slashed. It looked almost right, the car tilted like that. And I drove it like that. And I kept on driving, until I found help.

After the service, we stood outside. The guy broke down in a way that made me ashamed. He tried to hold my hand. I told him, please, to not do that. I told him, please, to go away. I wanted to be alone, I told him. I didn’t want to be touched, I told him. I walked to behind the church. I know I should have been nicer to him. But the holidays were over. There was too much snow on the ground. And I had a thought. I thought, You don’t know when your last snowfall is. It was such a fucking stupid thought.

But this was the shift, if you’re looking for one. I was leaning against the back of the church. I was saying words that sounded like prayer. I was saying words that sounded like
fuck
and
help.

And I heard a plane. And my brain said duck. My brain said now and now and now. There was a lot going on. There was snow, and there was the sound of snow. The moon was out when it shouldn’t have been. The moon seemed close enough to touch. And there was the guy in the way of the moon. He said to get up. But I couldn’t get up. And he said, Get up.

A mechanic looked at my tires. Someone doesn’t like you, he said. But it was a miracle, he said, that I’d made it there. I agreed it was a miracle. It was a miracle, driving on two slashed tires. A miracle had pushed me hard through the snow. The mechanic told me to wait in a room. There was tinsel on the floor. There was a fake tree in the corner. There was the smell of oil and the smell of smoke. And the snow was really coming down. And the mechanic was beautiful, with black beneath every nail.

I could clearly see the scene on the ground. And if I had been someone else, I might have been putting out fires. I might have been pulling bodies out from the wreckage. I might have felt heroic, diving headfirst into the mess. And if I had been someone else, I might have been a body in the mess. I might have been a body pulled from the wreckage. Instead of a body on a couch. Then in a car. Then on a bed. Instead of a body starting something it would have to stop.

I could clearly see the scene on the ground. But I couldn’t see the scene inside the plane.

At dinner, I asked my father why things were the way they were. And my father said, Not my fault. Because it wasn’t my father’s fault, the world. He was too small to take the blame. He was only a person, for God’s sake. It was no one person’s fault, the world. Nothing that small was ever to blame for something that big. I said, Then whose fault is it. And he said, Not mine.

I often imagined crossing the tightrope. I knew to stare straight to the other side. I knew to hold the stick steady. I knew to force the crowd to be silent. And then, when I reached the other side, I knew to force it to explode.

The mechanic would keep my car overnight. I’d shredded the tires. Shredded the rims. Something was ruined underneath. He drove me home in a tow truck. I tried to think of things to say. Like something about how he chose his job. Like what, was he good at fixing things. Or did he just like cars. But it was such a terrible-feeling day. I wanted to tell the mechanic that. But I hardly knew the mechanic. And I hardly knew the girl.

If I were someone else, I would make something up. I would say she and I did things together. Or we were best friends. Or we were in love. But I’ll just say I lit her cigarette once. I’ll say I was shaking as I lit it. I’ll say the fire kept going out. I’ll say it turned into a private joke. I’ll say, Enough.

I looked as the pen scratched down my arm. It had felt like a feather. Or like an ant. But I was thinking ghost. And I said, Stop. I meant, Go. I meant, Stay. I meant, God. And I stood. And he stood. And on our way out the door we crushed the pills with our boots.

I could clearly see the scene from the ground. It looked, from the ground, like meteors falling. Not like plane parts falling.

But like fire falling. I could see the town go up in flames. And I would hear its name every day for the rest of my life.

The mechanic said to have a good day. But it was already not a good day. It was already a terrible day. And I thought to invite him in. I would take his coat. I would make him tea. I would tell him about my night. That it was very good and it was very bad. That it could have been love. That it would never be love. And I would dig out the black from beneath every one of his nails.

But I sat in the tow truck for a moment longer than I should have. A song was playing on the radio. I knew the song from some other time. There were holiday lights in all of the windows. There were holiday lights in all of the trees. It was warm in the truck. And outside it would not be.

The night before, I’d slept the deepest sleep. And I waked not knowing what I was waking into. And the phone kept on ringing. Someone saying, Get up, get up. My father saying, I saved your life. My father saying, Miracle. The guy in my bed saying something.