Slide - Kyle Beachy [109]
I stood at the foot of my parents’ bed. They were both here, both parents. Look how huge, this bed. Two bodies slid by mutual agreement to farthest reaches of the mattress, the valley between. I thought of the mess of limbs in which I had awoken and brought one of the pills to my mouth and swallowed it.
A half hour later and I was still watching them sleep. My mother had shifted slightly and my father had rolled over when his snoring had woken him, then settled back into his rhythm of breath.
For me, sleep was some destination miles from here, a full day's drive to the coast, the endless waves that washed you inward while the undertow beneath pulled forever out. If it was everyone's fault at once, that would imply nobody's guilt—and this was the terror of it all. I swallowed a second pill.
I remembered going with my father to sandbag against rising floodwaters in 1996. Service. All the money I had taken from my pockets over the years and dropped into a homeless man's hand. The homeless women with children. Phone calls to grandparents. All the apologies for those names and numbers and faces I had forgotten. How many apologies? Small to large, the limitless wrongs. Stealing candy from the five-and-dime as a boy. Sorry. The lies, from incremental to grand; caught lying, I'm sorry. A liar and doer of wrong. Nonbeliever and ogler and arbiter. Disbeliever.
My father kicked at the blanket. I moved to my mother's side of the bed and saw she was wearing earplugs. For her: silence. No husband, no apologies. I bent and looked into her closed eyes.
You were or you were not remorseful, and if you were not, you were a robot or sociopath.
I whispered to her face, “I am sorry,” then again, having crossed to his side of the bed, kneeling among the saw of his labored breath and knowing, things equal, the man before me would as soon forgo this rest in favor of work. Whispered, “I am sorry,” and swallowed another pill.
And were they awake, surely they would have answered in kind.
It was for these moments that we had designed language, all the rules and games. Wild-card piece, the chute or the mousetrap or the Sorry. Other cards in the game: I am waiting; I am happy; I am in love. No assurance the state will last beyond the saying of it.
This was the time I stood at the foot of my parents’ bed, watching them sleep. That man had never successfully forgiven that woman, though he had claimed to. THOUGH he had tried very very hard and was still trying to this day. And said he did forgive. She would never forgive him for failing to forgive her or failing to see how hard she was trying to forgive herself. Though she, like him, had, was, and would continue to. Try.
I was not tired in the least. I swallowed another pill.
The alarm radio came on and I hurried from their room and climbed the stairs to the second floor.
She did not ask how I knew of her son or if he had grown. This was an ethical mistake, mine, involvement. Her balances unhinged. Young man arrived, and she took hold with her language of community and labor and led me inside. But for what desire? What vacancy or need of that failed mother-woman? Trouble. Call the thing desire and blame the body. Obey the body, invent the why at your leisure. Apologize.
This was the world of codes and guidelines. These were the mechanisms.
The day arrived seamlessly. There was a noise above me, what might have been something moving in the attic. It was now a bit past seven o'clock. It was now eight. It was now nine-thirty and my mother left the house.
I ran through a series of basic stretches I remembered from baseball practice. I swung my arms in small circles, then reversed direction. I swung large circles. We would stand in a circle, a bunch of young men twirling our arms and lifting one foot as if this was a perfectly normal thing to do.
I was still wearing my jeans and Opal Worpley's too-tight shirt.
I went downstairs. At the sight