At Least They're Committed

Stars shining bright above you; night breezes seem to whisper I love you . . .

“He’s on the beach, Cathy. I left him there. Can’t you see him?” No. I can’t. There are only scraps, shards of wood, seashells and seascum and . . . what is it? I reach down and pick it up. It’s squishy in my hand but doesn’t melt away like the foam. I hold it up to get a closer look. It’s fleshy, gray, pressing it between my fingers I feel something hard within, something bony. Slime. It’s, it’s . . . I hold it up closer. He had blue eyes, whoever he was, because the eye, the socket, the high fragmented cheekbone and the tattered flesh around it are staring directly back into my eyes. I try to scream, but of course I can’t. I drop it.

“See, I told you he was here,” says the faded male figure behind me, sandy blonde, white gauze shirt slightly blowing behind him. “I told you.”

Then I see. The wood washed up on the shore isn’t wood. Its limbs. HIS limbs, whoever he was. The seashells are fragments of skull, the seaweed matted black hair, watery foam laced with blood, his blood.

Birds singing in the sycamore tree . . . dream a little dream of me.

So many fish tanks! Why did I get so many fish tanks: small ones, big ones, salt and freshwater, one stacked on top of the other, each murky but if you look long enough you can see them. When did I get them? Why? I’ve neglected them. I’ve forgotten about the fish! But there they are, still swimming, some not so quickly. Some looking like they might die unless I finally feed them, finally siphon the rancid water in which they gasp for survival. Glass window upon glass window, clouded by green and brown slime, masking the inhabitants, all of them mine, brought here by me and then forgotten. Must feed them. Must clean! I reach into the tank of a fantailed gold, a fish surrounded by a pall, molted scales and flesh. I reach to scoop her out, to put her into fresh water so I can fix her home, her situation. Rid us all of the filth. But my index finger slips under the pall, under the broken scales and as I try to pull her out to safety, she instead breaks into three pieces. No blood, no change in her eyes. She’d been moving before but, like the rest, was already dead.

Say nighty-night and kiss me. Just hold me tight and tell me you miss me . . .

The raft is crude and wooden, when I come-to the cold waves are lapping at my face like a dog wakening its master. What happened? I only kind of remember. Flames, explosion, people jumping, people falling, people clutching one another in quiet resignation, fully understanding the water is as brutal and as fatal a foe as the fire. But now all is quiet. It’s a long time ago, and the once cradling ark has become seaside compost. Too easy for them. I worry about splinters as I shift, knowing how futile it is but not being able to stop myself. Groans. Other people out there, bobbing up and down in an ocean so black it’s impossible to detect land from sea. But there, there!!! Do you see it?? Two eyes looking back at me. Staring. A faint outline of a head, bald and beautiful, innocent, a child. A baby floating in the ocean looking to me to save him. I splash through the ebony waves to reach him, no thoughts of splinters, left and right palms reaching far out, can only grab his head . . . better than nothing. I’ll just pull him into me. I can. I can. I wrap my hands around his little head and pull him to me. Nothing more? My mind calculates. He’s too light. Nothing more. A head. The head of a baby. The sharks got him, got to him before I did. I scream out loud, holding the disembodied head of a child, dead eyes staring into mine. I sit straight upright in my bed, throw the remains of the corpse beneath my sheets and run gasping out of my bedroom. After an hour in fetal position rocking in Dad’s Lazy Boy, I cautiously move back to the room, heart pounding so loud it nearly drowns out my breathing. Cautiously, I pull back the sheets. “It’s not a baby, Cathy. Get ahold of yourself. It can’t be.” No, Timothy the Grizz-elly looks back, glass green eyes. My friend. “Timothy!!! Jesus CHRIST!!!” I curl up with the teddy bear, a gift from my aunties when I turned one, his dead chipped pupils looking away from me. The baby is safe. I can protect him. I just can’t sleep.

While I’m alone and blue as can be, dream a little dream of me.

“The dogs are in the fan!” I’m so worried, but not by the eyes of frightened teenage girls rolling up at me from the living room. I’m on the second floor landing and the wooden rail is all that keeps me from plunging to the floor below. Well, that and a presence of something grabbing my arms from behind, pulling me back, infuriating me. “Don’t you hear it? Don’t you see it!!! Can’t you hear the sirens? The DOGS ARE IN the FAN!!!” I lash out as my husband pulls me back, “The dogs are OK, they’re fine,” he says and I’m enraged by his patronizing. “Can’t you HEAR THAT!!!!?” I scream as he pushes me back into the bedroom. “The sirens? Can’t you hear the sirens?” There are no sirens, he tells me, and as I begin to fade back into MY world I know he’s right. Not a sound save for Crystal asking Lily, “Is your mom drunk?” and Lily replying apologetically, “No, she has dreams.” . . . but then sirens start to wail and then the dogs, all of them, not just the usual chorus, start to scream and cry and bellow at the world and I’m truly awake and I look up at my husband who says, “Whoa! That’s creepy!”

Stars fading, but I linger on dear, still craving your kiss . . .

There’s something, someone in the bed next to me. I grab it and shake. “Who are you? Who ARE YOU?” “I’m your husband,” he answers, bored, as if he’s been through this so many times before.

I’m longing to linger ’til dawn dear, just saying thiiiiiiis . . .

I’m stiffly upright in the bed. “There are people under there! I can see them!!” Can’t you see them? The cement, the building is on top of them!!!” We’re at the house on Cottonwood. “No, Cathy, they’ll be OK, there’s nobody down there,” he says. It’s a little different, he knows, but so much of the same. “God will take care of them.” That’s good, I think as I look at the silhouettes standing before me, crushed by floor upon floor upon floor above them, because, “they’re alive.”

Sweet dreams ’til sunbeams find you. Sweet dreams that keep your worries far behind you  . . .

I’m standing in my bedroom window, looking miles and miles to the street below. I’ve pushed out the screen and it’s disappeared in the black night. I heard the plane go over head. The sign. I knew what that meant. “The Devil’s here.” I’m aware that the faded blonde man in the gauze shirt hovers outside. “There’s no escape.” And I know he’s right. The plane, the crash, the fire behind me, the many floors below me. The Devil is here and I know I’ll burn if I don’t jump, but jumping means certain death and I know that, too. Does anyone KNOW what it feels like to KNOW you’re going to die? I do. Die by flame; die by crashing to the Earth. Only options. I was going to die and I was resigned to it. The fire, the Devil was so close. But then it occurs to me that I have to try. If I can get my hands in rhythm, maybe I can get my heart to start again. When I come-to, my sister is picking me up, she’s a big girl, and I’m in the living room of our family home. I’m a slight 16-year-old and my hands just won’t go in time! “They don’t have to,” she says, disgusted, carrying me to my bed. “They don’t?” I’m so confused, I look at them. Odd. I mean, I live in a ranch style, not a 100-story building. The plane? The fire? It was so real. I know what it’s like to make the choice to die, to know what it is to know you’re about to die.

When the fantasies and the hope are all gone. Thank God we have dreams.