Before and Afterlives (35 page)

One day, when he had enough strength to squeeze out a few words and asked me to sit with him a while, I called my boss, A
lbert, and said, “My boy’s not doing well, Albert. I have to stay home.”

“That boy’s never doing well, Em,” said Albert. “Doris El
iot’s girl has the same thing your boy has, and Doris makes it to work okay. I need you here.”

It was a Saturday night, so there were obviously a lot of i
nserts of ads and coupons for the Sunday paper.

I said, “I can’t. He spoke today, Al. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

“I can’t hold your job either, Em,” said Al. He said, “I’m sorry, too.”

So that’s why I was on the dole for a while, sir. After N
athan’s dilemma ended, though, I immediately went back to work. I am not the sort to take and take for no good reason.

I never gave up on Nathan. Not like so many of these other families of the Disappeared do. Let me tell you, I held firm in my convictions. He was not dead, like the Mourners would have us believe. I know this. I have proof. He’s not dead still, and I will even tell you why.

After nearly twelve months, Nathan had almost completely disappeared. At the end, or what seems like it is the end for most people, I would look in on him and could barely make him out. He was thin, unlike Sarah and myself, and the blanket I’d covered him with barely moved as he breathed. Once I held a mirror under his nose and it came back with just a dusting of white steam. It made me happy to see even that. I drew a heart in the condensation and showed it to Nathan. Look, I wanted to say, here is proof. He smiled a thin smile back, his lips parting to reveal his upper row of teeth. His teeth weren’t white, though, and they appeared unenameled. They winked briefly with light. I saw tendrils of roots, brown nerves, suspended inside them. I didn’t say anything, but his teeth looked like glass.

He became completely clear at one point. Clear as those tran
sparent pages of the human body you will find in some encyclopedias. Like the plastic models of the human body in biology classrooms, I saw everything he held inside. The cage of his ribs; the lungs and heart moving blindly as a cat under a blanket; the intestines, both upper and lower, twisted together; the butterfly-shaped pelvis; and, of course, his skull, with his blue eyes looking jellyish in their sockets. There was so much of his life beyond me, so much I didn’t know. Here he was, revealing his most private organs, and I still knew nothing at all. What were his favorite colors, his favorite music? Where did he like to spend his afternoons? Was he really as popular at school as I’d imagined? Why had he, for the past two years, taken to holing himself up in the attic on weekends, carrying along a supply of books, food, pillows and blankets, refusing to eat dinner in the kitchen with Sarah and me, saying angrily, “Can’t I do anything without you knowing? Don’t you know what privacy is?” Was it my fault I had no husband, or one that was worthless, and that I had to work afternoons and evenings to support the kids? I’m not asking for pity, sir. Lord knows I did the best I could.

I could say things about him. I could say he was a sad child. Next to him, Sarah’s melancholy seemed like happiness. I could say he needed a father figure. He needed a school where he did not have to worry about being robbed or shot. He needed friends who did not give him drugs. I found them—I was not unaware. But what could I do? If I threw a fit, grounded him, said to get a job, snapped his cigarettes in half, brought out from the attic the other stuff, screamed
,
Not In My House
,
as loud as I could, stamped my feet, shook him by his narrow shoulders, hugged him and wept, said
,
Please Don’t Do This To Me, I Can’t Bear It Any Longe
r
—what use would that have been? Would it have kept him in his body?

I could say he was not as strong as my daughter. He could not stand up to the pressure as Sarah has. She has my blood in her. He was weak like his father. Instead of the drink, he chose to di
sappear, so that no one could ever touch him—could ever hurt him—again. I could say for your benefit, sir, He was not made for this world. There are some people who just simply cannot thrive. Would that help your studies? There, I’ve said it. Consider it a gift.

By the following December, Nathan’s insides had disappeared as well. He was now entirely transparent, a plastic model of the human body without a view of the organs. I crawled into bed with him one day and lay there and hummed, in case he could still hear. I thought that might be a comfort. A year and a half he lay on that bed, flickering. How do you comfort that?

I went out into the blizzardy snow one evening and bought him a fish. I went to one of the top-notch places, one of the stores in the mall. I wanted him to have the best fish, the very best. When he was a little boy he wanted one, and I, foolishly, hadn’t allowed it. Instead, I had tugged on his arm and hissed, “They’re too e
xpensive!”

I bought the whole set-up: the aquarium and the filters, the diver figurine that rested on the layer of blue stones at the bottom, the cave for him to explore. When I looked in one of the store’s tanks, I found something called ghost fish swi
mming inside. You could almost miss seeing them, if you didn’t look hard. The ghost fish were completely translucent, except for the tiny shadows of their skeletons cupped in their transparent flesh. They swam in hordes, back and forth across the tank, miniature fish skeletons rippling the water. The saleswoman helping me said, “Those are our best sellers.”

“They won’t do,” I said. I didn’t explain. I bought a Si
amese fighting fish instead, with all those iridescent colors: blue and purple and red shining scales. The fins trailed around its body like silk scarves. I thought, How beautiful. I had forgotten such a thing could exist. It was so insistent on being seen.

The saleswoman helping me said, “Just don’t put two of this type in the same tank or they’ll fight. They’re fighting fish.” She explained how they puff up really large and all of their colors turn radioactive, how they tear into each other as though one tank isn’t big enough for the both of them. I laughed and laughed. I had to hold my aching stomach. She made it sound like a Western movie.

I don’t know if it was a comfort to Nathan, but it was to me. I needed something in his room. A fish that insists on being seen seemed right.

The night before Christmas, Sarah and I gathered around his bed to open presents. Nathan could not be moved. My hands swam through him if I tried to lift him, and Sarah had no better luck. We had wanted to take him down by the fir
eplace—with the stockings hanging on the mantel—down by the Christmas tree to see its winking lights. After running our hands through his body though—after that, we gave up. The fish tank gurgled on top of Nathan’s scarred wooden desktop, casting bluish light over the room, rippling water shadows over the walls. The Siamese fighting fish floated in the water. It watched us seriously. Maybe it wished not to be separated by the plate of aquarium glass. I wanted to smack it, tell it to leave us alone, that this was a private moment. As glad as I was to have that fish in Nathan’s room, it was starting to feel like competition.

I gave Sarah a new sweater and jeans, and the latest CD of her favorite sulky music. She hugged me and I almost cried to feel her arms tighten around my shoulders. I thought, Why haven’t we been hugging all the time?

Nathan was barely present. His head was tilted towards Sarah and me, and I think I saw him smile once or twice. I don’t know. I might have imagined it. But in my memory, he smiled.

The next day he was gone. I woke and wandered sleepily into his room to find his bed empty. The blanket lay across his bed in rumpled hills and valleys, but underneath, nothing stirred. I sucked my breath in hard, so hard it cut down the length of my throat like a knife. That first breath wasn’t enough, though, and I kept gasping for air. Each time I did, the knife cut deeper.

I attacked the bed, scooped up armfuls of quilting and sheets. I think I howled a curse. I screamed, “Nathan! Nathan!” over and over. I threw off every blanket and then the mattress, the box springs. I would have ripped up the floorboards if I’d had the strength. I ran downstairs and looked in the living room, where sometimes he’d land after a fall in the past. He wasn’t there. I ran down to the basement and searched through boxes full of discarded memories, but he was not there.

He was not there.

He was not there. Not anywhere in the house. Sarah finally found me in the kitchen, nibbling a Christmas cookie, one of those that have been cut into a shape. I was eating a Chris
tmas tree trimmed with green frosting. She asked me what was the matter and I shook my head. She knelt beside me and said, “Mommy.” I almost cried. She never called me that. It was always Mother. Never a sign of affection from that girl, but I am proud of her for that. In this way, she is protected.

I didn’t know what to do, what the procedures were, so I took the bus to the hospital. I went to the ward where Nathan had had tests at one time. There was a nurse at the desk, scribbling on a pad. I said, “My son—”

“He’s doing well,” she told me. I blinked. “You’re Mrs. Murphy, right?” I nodded, wanting to be Mrs. Murphy instead of Mrs. Livingston right then. “You can go in and see him now,” the nurse said. She pointed to the door behind me. I went in. There he was—Mrs. Murphy’s son—sitting in a chair next to his bed, staring out the window. I looked where he was looking, but the window was filled with light. Light so bright, no one could look at it without going blind. I turned to him again and saw the floral pattern of the wallpaper behind him. I saw i
t
throug
h
him.

Sarah and I did not eat much after the memorial service. She lost a lot of weight and I got a new job, cleaning rooms at the Bakersfield Inn. I bought her a new wardrobe as soon as I could, and took her to a dermatologist. She was so happy. She practically danced through the front door after school each day. We tried to put Nathan behind us as best we could, but it was difficult. While we ate supper together one evening, Sarah put her fork down on her plate and said, “He’s still here. I can feel him. He isn’t gone, Mother.”

We both looked up at the ceiling for some reason, but there was nothing there.

I should have known she was right, though. She is a smart girl, smarter than I’d ever guessed. She brings home straight A’s. When she said he was still here, I should have believed her.

Several nights after Sarah and I looked up at the ceiling, I heard someone knocking at my front door. It was very late, after midnight. I immediately suspected trouble, but I gat
hered my robe around me and went down to see who was there.

The knocking grew more insistent as I went downstairs. At first it had been a rapping, but now it became forceful, and the door shook a little in its frame. I grabbed at the collar of my robe, as if that could protect me.

I went to the picture window first, and pulled back the curtain a little. It was snowing outside, the flakes drifting in piles along the windowsill, collecting on the steps of my porch. Under the florescent street lamps, the snow in the front yard, and in my neighbors’ yards, seemed to glow purplish-white under the dark sky. The window was cold. It gave off coldness as a fire will give off heat.

There was no one on my porch, but I still heard the knoc
king. I pulled back from the window and looked at the door again. It shook in its frame.

I dropped the curtain and went to the door. I opened it just a little, in case someone was out there and I needed to close it quickly. It didn’t matter, though. There was no one. I swung the door wide and stepped outside.

The knocking had stopped as soon as I opened the door. Now I looked around, turning my head quickly one way, then the other, trying to see if any prankster shadows ran off, scurrying down the street, choking on their own laughter. I saw nothing. I looked down, puzzled, and saw the snow piling up on my porch steps, drifting onto the porch itself.

There were no footprints.

I stepped back inside and slammed the door. I locked it. I pressed my back against the door, and again the knocking started. The door bucked at my back, lifting under the blows.

“Stop it, Nathan,” I whispered. “Please stop it.” Sarah was at a friend’s house, spending the night, and I was thankful she was not here right then. The knocking continued.

I ran upstairs and went into his room. I had tried not to go there since that Christmas morning, only to feed the fish and that was all. The bed still lay on the floor in a jumble, mattress and box springs thrown against opposite walls. The fish tank gurgled, its small light glowing in the dark room. The Siamese fighting fish floated inside, fanning its fins. I closed my eyes, opened them. The knocking would not stop.

I went over to the fish tank and peered inside. I pressed so close my head bumped against the glass. The fish must have felt my bump against the aquarium was an attack, though, b
ecause suddenly it turned on me, a bloated red tumor, and swam at me, fins flying.

I don’t know what came over me, sir, but I couldn’t help myself. I grew angry too. I couldn’t help it. Perhaps my own face grew bloated and red as well. As the fish charged, I grabbed hold of the edge of the tank and pushed it onto the floor. Glass sha
ttered. Water poured out, and the fish with it. It flipped and flopped on the hardwood floor, next to the diver figurine that had landed nearby.