From Day to Night

Blazing and sweltering, the sun shines down on my body, burning itself into my skin as I walk along the sandy shore of the ocean, trying to cope with the dull ache in my heart. Pieces of seashells stick out of the sand, the scalding sand that I cannot stand still on for too long because it burns too much. To cool my feet, I run down to the gleaming water, allowing the soothing tide to lick my toes, my heels, my ankles, until I give in to the temptation and walk deeper into the roaring waves. They rush forward, rolling over each other, pushing everything aside in their eagerness to greet me. As I get deeper out, the tide creeps up to my knees, my hips, my waist, my shoulders, and then I can no longer feel the sandy ocean floor beneath me. I’m swimming now, my arms stroking through the water effortlessly, independently. The waves are softer, caressing, not trying to push me back to shore anymore, instead trying to wash away my pain, my homesickness for Michigan.

I float on my back on the water’s surface, looking up at the cheerful blue sky framed by puffy white clouds. I hear nothing but the waves crashing against each other and seagulls cawing as they fly through the air, drowning out the sounds of the people on the shore. I feel the sun’s burning rays hitting me, but with the refreshing water washing over my body, it is no longer uncomfortable. My thoughts flicker to Michigan, my home, but before I make myself too depressed with those thoughts, I focus on the waves, letting them immerse me in tranquility. I lay there on top of the water, watching the clouds move above me for seemingly forever before taking a deep breath, filling my lungs with the salty air, and going under the sea.

There, it’s like a different world, the waves a quiet murmur above me. My hair circles crazily around my face and I see nothing, the darkness ominously obscuring my vision. I am surrounded in nothing, suspended in the water, tasting the saltiness on my lips. It is strangely peaceful and I surprise myself by realizing that in Michigan, one couldn’t do this. Finally, my head breaks through the water and I emerge back into the real world, only to be greeted by an amazing spectacle. The sun sets above me, the sky an array of pinks, purples, oranges and yellows. After bobbing in the surf for a few moments, watching in awe and wonder, I swim back to the shore, my heart feeling lighter.

Upon reaching land, I lay down, the sand sticking to my wet body, rooting me to the Florida ground. The sun has completely disappeared now. The gentle wind rustles the bushes and the straight backed palm trees. Stars appear in the black sky and the moon winks above me, looking like the tip of my thumbnail. I bathe in the dim light and breathe in the salty air, relishing in the quiet serenity of all that my new home has to offer.

Allergies

   I walk through the door and the smell of antiseptic fills my nose. Along the exteriors of the wall, there are the infamous not-so-comfy chairs that are all awkwardly connected by a wooden plank underneath the seats. The middle of the room is empty; drained of people. I cautiously approach the sign-in clipboard at the front desk, write my name in the fading ink of the pen provided and mark that I am here for an appointment. The doctor smiles at me with that twisted grin of his as he leads me to the nurses who check my vitals.

   There are boxes of “Puffs,” “Kleenex,” and those generic Wal-Mart brands that no one’s ever heard of, scattered across tabletops and laying haphazardly on more uncomfortable chairs. I’m here to get my allergies retested for the spring and winters to come. I dread the feeling of needles penetrating my skin as the nurse fills my shots with high concentrated liquids of brown and yellow, trying to make harmless small talk. I can feel the internal disturbance of my bloodstream even before she finishes. She sticks them, individually into the underside of my forearm.

   “Look, this one’s gold!” she exclaims. Please stop. Don’t try to make this fun – I know the difference between pain and happiness. Though, me being a teenager, she may be wary of my emotional stability.

   The liquid bubbles up beneath my skin as I hold back tears. I’ve been taking my Zyrtec D irregularly, and she disapproves.

   “How can you not need it during allergy season?” she questions my understanding of the allergies I’ve been living with since the age of six. The dependency upon medicine is never something I’ve been tolerant of, having independence woven through every lesson of my upbringing.

   She suggests nose sprays for my chronic sinus infections, “Sudafed is nice, but I would recommend Nasonex – they make a nice one that coats the insides of your nostrils.” Fantastic, just what I need. She goes on to propose a Nedi-pot; the dreaded of all objects to clear out the nose.

After she checks my blood pressure while squeezing the life out of my bicep, she checks my pulse and the doctor comes back with a smirk on his face.

   “I’d like to try a little experiment if you don’t mind,” he says as he places an ice cube on my left shoulder to test how my hives form. Though the doctor I previously saw told me how common this allergy was, my new doctor has decided to treat me as a unique piece of research. He’s sickeningly fascinated by my allergy to the cold.

   No, I’m not kidding you – I am allergic to the cold. The snow outside burns my skin and turns it to a blotchy, unattractive red that entices scratching until blood appears. The constant of cool air – winter, air-conditioning, everything – will graze my skin and form the repulsive bumps that only disappear when exposed to heat. There go the snowball fights, cool movie theatres, and the occasional winter walk. I can’t swim in any water below eighty degrees, or I’ll end up looking like a bumpy lobster by the time I exit the water. And there goes any possible fun I could ever experience in a public pool.

   My arms ache with the twenty different possibilities of allergies stuck beneath my skin – none of which I have a reaction to besides the control that is impossibly and painfully inflamed. If I so much as twitch a finger, the nurse will be back to pin me down; refusing to let me move in fear of the liquid escaping from the bubbles of skin that have all turned a putrid, bruised brown.

   When she returns to wipe the excess fluid from my forearms, the marks of entry from each needle remain; reminding me that though I can get weekly injections and I can take my Zyrtec, the allergies will linger. My arms will still bleed and stay discolored. She coats my arms with cream that she claims will ease the pain. It doesn’t. And why should I believe her? Each of my forearms is wrapped in Saran Wrap, making them look like white lumpy salami.

   The doctor removes the ice cube to reveal a hive the size of a three-dimensional quarter with an obvious observation that: yes, anything cold causes me to break out in hives. No experiment necessary, you creep. I am not a lab rat.

   I exit with the bottom halves of my arms disfigured, a giant hive on my shoulder and my nose not quite empty; the infuriation of my allergies forever surviving in my skin.

Portrait of a Room

There’s something Tess has never liked about museums. It’s not the people, necessarily; she is even a little envious of them. Avant-garde hipsters walking around frantically, looking busy – writing or photographing or standing there with head tilted, trying to appear contemplative. Unaffected, jaded watchers, wise ones who, alone, know what art is and judge the masses for their obedience to the exhibits. At times the whole thing seems silly to her, but at least they’re here by choice. Tess enters the museum, trying to slip through a crack in the door that is as small as possible. Her job here is to not take up space. Her coworker in this room of the modern art wing is entering at the same time. “Morning, Jim,” she murmurs quietly to him, and her voice glances across the windows in sweeping echoes. Morning, morning, morning. Jim grunts self-importantly, seeming to swell up like a navy-and-brass-upholstered balloon. His skin is dark brown to her caramel tan, his hair as short as hers is long. Somehow his grunt barely echoes at all – maybe that’s why he got the promotion and she didn’t. Technically he outranks her now, not that it really matters, since their jobs are identical; make sure no one gets too close to the art.

As she takes up her post in a blank white corner, Tess sees the painting she stares at every day. “The Senseless Cycle, Tender and Benign, Bring Great Comfort,” it’s called. By Lari Pittman. She knows a lot more about it, too, including the year it was painted, what some art historians think it means, and what’s across from the wall it’s hanging on. And where you’d be if you stood in front of it, walked to the right, took the next right and then two lefts and exited through the glass doors you’d find. Not that Tess really cares about any of these things; it’s just her job to know them. She stares at her favorite corner of the painting’s canvas: a pair of eyes, among a jumble of other objects. They are oddly shaped, swirled with arrows and trees and feathers shooting out of them. Ice blue, like her own, but many times larger. Or maybe just more noticeable. In her mind, they are the arbiters of justice, the subtle gods of what is, the lovers of truth and speakers of silence. A blessing and a curse, for as they watch they are doomed never to participate. Tess feels that they have no purpose of their own, and yet without them purpose would perhaps cease to be.

It is cool and open in this room, though the strips of metal wire around the paintings line and confine her, strapped down with paintings and sculptures on an intentionally white gurney. To her left is the room full of blank white canvases with little strips of metal on them. They remind her of her life, every day among the security wires, white walls and silver slivers. None of the visitors here can understand that. Tess is too young to know how to escape, but too old not to want to learn. Soon the museum is open, and people begin trickling in. Next to her, a young man is writing an exposé on the meaning of the chair shaped like the negative space of a stool. Red felt on metal. It looks uncomfortable, frankly. Tess notices the missing pieces and the things that don’t fit in the art around her. Being here every day, it’s hard not to. What she sees in this sculpture is emptiness, lack of use. She so badly wants to know what this guy thinks is important enough to write about. What does he see in that stool? Her guess is, it’s just the fact that it’s here, in a museum, where age equals honesty and death equals power. But she’d love to be proved wrong, love to hear him talk about how his mother owned the metal stool missing from that sculpture, and how she put flowers on it the exact red of that felt, and how after she died those flowers sat there, withering, until he threw them out. And how now, when he sees that shade of red, he wishes he had planted the half-dead flowers instead of locking them in a green metal trash can to become all-dead.

Across from Tess, a girl rails in whispers that the sculpture “Concrete Screen Door” is not art, it is just a door. Tess rolls her eyes, and receives a stern look from Jim. Rule number one of museum guards: protect the art. Rule number two: respect the patrons. But she has seen “just doors,” and this is not a “just door.” Although if truth be told, she’s never seen a door without a doorway. She imagines going up to the girl and saying, “Do you understand that a screen door keeps little things out? And a concrete door keeps big things in?” She does not do this, of course, even though she wants to. How can anyone even define what is and is not? And how can what is not hold us to anything? The girl moves on to another wing, her muttering becoming incoherent. Her annoying little ballet flats slap against the floor. Ker-slap, ker-slap. Tess sighs and rubs her eyes. Two hours gone. Too many to go.

Now a group of elementary school kids are coming up to her. They’re lost, and can she please tell them the way to the cafeteria? Patiently, she outlines the route for them. “See that painting over there?” She points rather indirectly at it – guards are not equal to the art they guard, and may not disrespect it. Rule number three. “I see it, the one with the eyes?” asks a boy. He can’t be more than seven or eight. “That’s the one. Now you walk to the right, take the next right and then two lefts, and go out some big glass doors. “Thank you,” whispers the shy voice of a little girl. She scampers off happily after her friends, louder than she should be. But Tess says nothing. She wants these kids to like her, and by association, the art. Of course, when the girl passes Jim, he reprimands her. “No running, young lady.”

Tess is annoyed again. She half wants to go up to that weathered tree trunk sculpture and climb it and sit on it and get thrown out of the museum. Preferably by Jim. It looks like a real tree trunk from where she’s standing, not something you see a lot of here in the city. Maybe Jim would like to climb it with her; maybe she should ask. She imagines their conversation:

Tess: “So, want to go climb that tree trunk?”
Jim: (blankly) “What tree trunk?”
Tess: “That one, over there. In that big room that seems like it was designed to fit that exact shape of tree trunk.”
Jim: (annoyed) “Oh, that. That’s a sculpture, not a tree trunk. And what do you mean, climb it?”
Tess: “Never mind. It was a stupid idea anyway.”
Jim: “Probably. Can you stand a bit to the left? You’re blocking my assigned sightline."
Tess: (quietly) Assigned sightline. Can’t you even figure out what to look at without a rule about it?”
Jim: “What was that?”
Tess: “Nothing.”

Tess also wants run her hands over the fuzzy grey paintstrokes of a mother and two children that she knows are in hanging on the opposite side of the wall behind her. She wants to feel what the artists felt as they molded clay in their hands and sewed together watercolors and cloth. She wants to lean into them, as she feels sure the artists did when they were done, and exhausted by their own work’s very existence. After all, once they have defined a piece, set out to begin it, they’re inviting an ending to come along and carry them. She wants to catch the dry bones tossed up by this art, and once she has done this, throw them back to the smell of salt and paint. She wants to free these caged animals, give them love and light and happiness and wear them down until they die and finally prove that they are alive. Maybe what she wants doesn’t matter, nor what she needs or sees or feels. But maybe it’s all that matters, if only because it’s also what the artist wanted, needed, saw, and felt. To write it down is to entrap it, to hold it forever and always have it near to summon at a moment’s notice. Of course, art is not like this. It cannot be named, held, owned, captured, or preserved. Perhaps this is why we try so hard, thinks Tess. Standing in a room of art, like creating art, is really just another form of being alone in your own head. If you have trouble with it, maybe it’s because you’re trying to make yourself feel something you don’t.

Crutches

10:09 PM, the last night of summer, I have become frustrated with my wife for what she told him. I hold it inside.

“Sit down, and shut the hell up! We’ve raised a monster of a child.” Sydney grumbles under his breath when hearing this, head down. “You’ll finish your food!”

His head propped up at me; eyes glistened of regret from something he was uncertain of whether or not he had actually done. His eyes are impeccably green.

I look away to my wife.

10:10 PM, the last night we ate dinner being able to tolerate one another, and I begin to think to myself in this awkward and unstable quietness:

What kind of a monster was he for not knowing what lied between black and white? He did not understand gray, but she made him wear it like a revealing patch sewed onto his heart, suffocating the rhythm of his livelihood.

All he knew was the pain that would come afterwards, the countless lectures, relentless scolding, but for what?

Why I think my wife is acting like a narcissistic, disconnected, pompous ass:

She talks to me about buying a convertible while Sydney struggles to open the front door to the house in the background.

What I see in Sydney’s eyes:

There is a reflection of my shame in that incandescent silence, and how he cried for me, through those bottomless pools of green iris, swirling about my existence, drowning me, waking me. “Please, please, wake up for me.”

One of the only memories I have of my reclusive father who left me to figure much for myself:

I use to run with him. Everywhere.

10:11-10:19 PM, still this very same night stuck in my head as Autumn begins to unravel, I listen to it all as he works his way up the stairwell.

Sydney manages to thrust himself from leaning on one crouch onto the other as legs dangle and swing in every direction like hanging corpses, and after several stumbles and loud thumps and clings of metal crouches hitting against the railing, he reaches his room.

What follows that moment:

Silence again. I can feel his glare piercing through the walls of our home and breaking through me. I am a hollow shell.

10:25 PM, same damn night, my wife and I in bed. I break:

“I know this is what he needs, but his mind is sick with the pain, literally swollen, and all you can do is act normal? Insanity is building up inside of him, and I’m going to do the job of showing his anger.”

My wife’s reaction immediately after:

She looked up from the book she was reading, smirked at me, looked back into the literature.

“What a fucking joke,” she uttered. I am a hollow shell.

I sleep on the couch.

10:26 PM, a gutless man lays half-awake and alone on his side, in the fetal position. That man is me. What I dream about:

I am in a heavily lit room thickened by a musty scent of rotting flesh. The room is enclosed, and there are no curtains to shade me from exposure. I take a look at my watch, and the date written above the time instantly sends a shiver through my spine. Today is my son’s birthday, and I’m missing it entrapped in my mind. Now the scent magnifies, and its pungency lingers in my nostrils, my brain refusing to recognize its familiarity. I am terrified to look below, and there they are. Twisted and crunched towards my body, one longer than the other: a pair of decaying useless limbs.

I want to swim under the endless green, but instead I am just defecating myself.

What I realize when I awake:

I have actually soiled myself.

What actually happened to Sydney somewhere along the way:

He was thrashed by a landscaping truck on a busy street near his high school.

What I imagine happening:

I am the driver, I am his crippled legs, I am an eternal sense of crookedness haunting him forever after.

6:07 AM, August 27, the echoing of the alarm sears into me, and I wait that relieving feeling that I have just sobered from the disorientation of a dream. What I feel instead:

My legs are numb.

8:09 AM, August 27, what Sydney is doing on his first day of school:

Waiting in the OR lobby for his 8:15 surgery.

What my mother said to me on a day that Sydney was recovering from the accident:

“You’re so reckless, Henry. Sydney will be fine, just stand near him when he needs you. You remind me of when you were in high school.”

8:11 AM, August 27, Sydney and I wait together, and he does what I should have done for him long before:

Grab my sleeve and say, “I’m scared.”

A letter I would write to my adolescent self:

To the desk of a time bomb of contradictions that will lead to helpless confusion,

I am confident you’re uncertain with yourself at this very moment, but do not exhaust yourself by blindly running the unending circuit in your mind. Unfreeze yourself. You ache for the discovery and for the serendipity of opportunity to expel you from your incessant displeasure of what you’re becoming. This is no waiting game. You have privilege before you, now opt to decision, and do not cripple yourself with the immensity of what the future holds. And be intuitive, not brash and impetuous, for buried underneath such a senseless act of impulsiveness is the hastiness to skip or dismiss all the transitions in life.

You have a child to take care of now. If you settle for less of what you’re granted to become, the love you carry with you will be frail, useless, pathetic, a PhD that hangs on the office wall of your mind only to impress sporadic visitors, and true compassion arises only from those who can endure and gain something from it. You will not be a shallow statue in the endless garden of what is seemingly alright, but is essentially conformity. This is not conformity. Necessity. Step out of your mind and find what may in fact be perpetually grateful for the voice you contribute in the unbearable heat of cruel silence.

Swim the green, do not forget to breathe.

Sincerely,

A cracked man who found nothing in himself, but a symbiotic and unconditional nature shared with his son.

8:13 AM, the first day of school for Sydney, he is having open surgery on his brain; I think of my wife, an impulsive decision I made when I was younger, and think of why I married her:

She didn’t know me very well at all.

8:19 AM, I am watching Dr. Cassidy prep my son for surgery as I stand from above in the concealed observatory, and I am back in my head, but I think differently, think of my dead father:

I use to run with him everywhere.

Dissapearance

“Hi, this is Erica. I’m not here right now, obviously, but feel free to leave me a message, and I’ll get back to you as soon as i can! Bye!”

You have fourteen new messages

Monday, 3:45 PM “Hey girl, it’s Chrissy. So, you know that hottie at the Heat last saturday night, the one who bought us drinks? Well, I have some big news for you! I know you’re working right now, but when you get off call me right back, okay? Love ya!”

Monday, 7:38 PM: “Erica, this is Janice. You never showed up for work today, and the little ones missed you. You know that the policy at Kindercare is to call in sick when necessary, and your going AWOL today is completely unacceptable. Call me back immediately.”

Monday, 10:17 PM: “Erica, it’s James. Baby, I’m sorry about what happened this morning. I was completely out of line, I know. And when I came home to find you and your suitcase gone, I realized that I was in the wrong. Just come home, babe. I promise, It’ll never happen again. I love you.”

Tuesday, 12:42 PM: “Erica, this is your mother. I feel the need to remind you that your great-aunt Helga is turning eighty this weekend, and since you skipped the last two family reunions, we’d like you to attend her party at noon this Sunday. Bring a gift, too. She’s registered at Crate and Barrel and Yankee Candle.”

Tuesday, 2:34 PM: “Hi Erica! It’s Diane. Yeah, you got that message from mom about great-aunt Helga’s birthday? Well, I have this huge trial on monday and there’s no way I can make it. I have like, no time to buy a gift either, so can you pretty please put my name on the present you bought her? I promise, i’ll pay you back. Get her a candle or something. Seriously, who registers for a birthday gift? Well, I gotta go, talk to you later.”

Tuesday, 3:54 PM: “It’s James again. Okay Erica, you made your point. I said I was sorry, what more do you want? I think two days of running away is more than enough. Are you hiding away at Chrissy’s? You better not be. Okay seriously Erica, I was willing to apologize and all that shit yesterday, but now I’m pretty pissed. You come home right now, or there’s gonna be trouble.”

Tuesday, 5:22 PM: “Girly, it’s Chrissy. James just called me and asked if you were over here, what’s going on? Seriously, I’ve called you like thirty times since yesterday, and you haven’t picked up once. I know your phones on ‘cause it rings and then goes to voicemail. Why are you ignoring me? What’d I do?”

Tuesday, 7:30 PM: “Erica, this is Janice again. This is the second time you’ve gone absent without leave. I’m very sorry, but if this happens one more time, you will lose your job. Goodbye.”

Tuesday, 8:21 PM: “Hey sis, it’s Diane again. Erica, I’ve gotten calls from Chrissy, your boss, and that...boyfriend of yours, and they have no idea where the hell you are. You know that if you’re in trouble you can always talk to me right? I love you, bye.”

Tuesday, 9:57 PM: “Alright bitch, why the fuck are you ignoring me? Do you want a repeat of Monday morning? ‘Cause I can supply that if you don’t get your ass back here now. You left your email wide open on your laptop, I can MobileMe you. I’ll give you two hours to come back, and if you don’t, I’m tracking you down and coming after you. And I can promise, sweetheart, it won’t be pretty.”

Tuesday, 11:57 PM: “I warned you.”

Wednesday, 8:38 AM: “Erica, it-it’s Chrissy. I just saw the news, and...Oh my God. You’re okay, right? They said the wounds weren’t fatal, but I hope you’re not all disfigured and weird. But, oh my God! You, and James, and-I never would have thought, just...oh my God.”

Wednesday, 10:12 AM: “Erica, it’s Diane. I know you’re in the hospital right now and you can’t see your phone. I would come visit you, but this trial is so important, and yeah. We all saw the piece on the news, and mom’s going into cardiac arrest, she’s freaking. I, uh, I just wanted to say I’m sorry. I should have known there was something wrong with James, I should have tried harder to look for you. And I’m really sorry I can’t see you today, really I am. I’ll try to squeeze in a visit tomorrow, okay? Love you, little sis.”

Wednesday, 11:01 AM: “It’s Janice again. Erica, I’m so sorry you were a victim of this tragedy. I’m happy to hear that you are alive and that horrible young man is locked up where he belongs, and I’m sorry I’ve been pestering you these last couple of days. You take as much time off as you need to recuperate. You’re in our prayers.”