Slide - Kyle Beachy [94]
“I'm here because you are my brother and I love you and yes these are my things yes and go right ahead if you want you're welcome to look at them touch them hold them.”
“Have you tried appearing somewhere else?”
“You keep missing the point this is my home and your home it's our home that's why we're both here.”
I glanced to where Freddy had moved by the window and noticed for the first time that he had no shadow. I reached into a box and pulled out a plastic telephone with oversize buttons.
“Oh, but soon enough we'll officially rupture,” I said, “and scatter about. Mom will go one place and Dad somewhere else— Dad probably into a loft downtown, a new urbanist act of solidarity Mom's hard to say. She'll need green space, obviously. A small garden outside some town-home duplex thing. New construction.”
I could feel him watching as I dug into the next box.
“Movement you didn't listen movement Potter is part of love a big part of love. Wherever they go whenever it happens Mom is still Mom and Dad's Dad and that's what I've been trying to tell you about love but it's not working. I'm not doing a good job.”
“There's that word. I was talking to Dad about this. It's so soft when you say it, like a shallow depression in space, a natural exhalation. Listen to me: love. Not as good.”
“Why do you think I'm here Potter why would I be here? Because of the toys you don't really think that don't be a twerp.”
“The ball was bobbing there in front of you. And you reached for it and nicked it with your fingers, and I bet this made you want it even more. And you fell in, and somewhere in my infant mind this connection was formed between wanting and dying.”
“They're still Mom and Dad will always be my mom and dad and you're my brother always look I died Potter and you're still my brother. You think love means staying still that's why you can't do it right you keep looking too hard at it like some thing sitting there but it's moving and you have to stop looking and start moving with it.”
“One in love does not create pain for the object of that love. True or false? True, obviously. Nor does one abandon the beloved or fail over many many years to forgive. Love. Shared phantom concept.” I looked at him. “Phantom.”
Because who was I even talking to here? A GHOST who had lived all of five years. Who was, if we're going to be frank, quite possibly a FIGMENT. What with the emotional turmoil, mood liability and confusion. Psychotic symptoms occur because of inadequate coping mechanisms or as an escape from a trying psychological situation. No point ignoring the facts at hand.
“You have to let it be something big Potter big and moving and bigger than what your eyes can see at once let it contain all of this and more like a mystery you can't see all of it at once.”
I stared at him resolutely and watched him lose definition, growing dimmer and dryer until he was gone completely. Inside the next box was a child's blanket, chewed and drooled upon, faded and old. Wrapped inside the blanket was a shoebox. I peeled tape and lifted the top half. Shapeless piece of textured rubber, dried by years and the Midwestern cycle of seasons. I dropped the box to the floor and stared at the deflated rubber ball in my hands. I squeezed it and tried to rip it and failed.
I heard landscapers going to work in a nearby yard. I had crossed into whatever day was to come next.
It was everywhere, streaming along the gutters of our roads, hovering like a weather system. Belief. We took two of three from the Phillies, gained a game and a half on the Cubs. The team began playing small ball, moving runners with abandon. The city celebrated this newfound aggression—reminded everyone of the mid-eighties. They double-stole second and third and bunted for singles. We beat Houston in the bottom of the twelfth on a suicide squeeze. By the cleanup hitter.
I drove to find Ian standing in front of his house with his back to the street. He threw his baseball onto the roof, waited as it rolled up then down the