Chapter XIV
She appeared from nowhere to straddle him while he slept—completely naked with her face obscured by her long, dark hair. When he awoke, he found her lips only inches from his own and her blue eyes peering out from behind her wild hair. She ran her slippery tongue along the side of his face while she tore away his blankets and clothes. Now as naked as she was, he didn’t bother to ask who she was or why she had come. It only mattered that she was here and moving her hands expertly over his body. He caressed her firm, perfect breasts and squeezed her little brown nipples; her head lolled back and she groaned with pleasure. Then he moved his hand to push the hair away from her face and confirm that Abby had come back to him…
The harsh beeping of the alarm shook Floyd from sleep; Abby evaporated into oblivion again. Floyd groaned and stared up at the ceiling while the alarm clock continued its obnoxious call. The same dream that had haunted him for the last month left him with the same empty, lonely feeling. He sat up and felt the spot next to him where Abby had once slept beside him. Nothing—as it would be forever.
The violent, gory nightmares had faded in the wake of his father’s death, replaced by the dream that was in many ways more sinister. To the relief of his neighbors, he no longer woke up screaming, but every morning he awoke to the disappointment and heartache of the realization that she was never coming back to him. The dream and its accompanying emptiness spoke volumes about what his life had become in the last month.
With a sigh, he reached over to turn the alarm clock off.
He hopped out of bed and shuffled into the bathroom. He still hadn’t regained all the weight he’d lost since Abby’s death and his skin still had a sickly pallor to it. Nor had he bothered to see the barber since his father’s funeral; with his shoulder-length hair, some people called him ‘ma’am’ by mistake. As he brushed his teeth, his face retained the flat, neutral expression he’d worn for the last month.
While the water ran in the shower, Floyd put his head against the mildewed green tile wall and closed his eyes. He tried to recreate his dream as the warm water ran down his back, but he couldn’t quite conjure the image in his mind. Why did the alarm have to go off at that moment? he wondered. Why couldn’t he live in the dream forever?
Instead, he showered, toweled off, and dressed for the day. After he did laundry he always arranged his shirts and pants in the same order in their respective drawers; he pulled out his Monday outfit of a midnight blue polo shirt and gray pants. Afterwards, he ate his Monday breakfast of toast with grape jelly and a glass of orange juice before he gathered up his wallet, keys, and backpack.
He stomped down the stairs without locking the door to his apartment—if anyone wanted his meager possessions they were welcome to them—and down to his car. The engine of the Dodge Shadow coughed to life and Floyd waited for a moment behind the wheel to let the car warm up. As he did, he had the familiar, suffocating sensation that always hit him as he drove to work. He didn’t have to go to work; he could take I-775 to the main highway and all the way to the West Coast if he chose. Of course he would have no money, no job, and no place to live, but he could find a way to get by. Out there, far away from the chilly
No, he told himself—as he did every day—he didn’t want to leave Dale, his mother, or Abby. On Wednesdays he went over to Todd’s place—careful to circumvent the store—to see his growing nephew. Every Friday night, he went over to his mother’s house to have dinner and play gin with her to keep her company. And on Sunday mornings he visited first his father’s grave and then Abby’s to make sure they were well-cared for and to keep them abreast of the latest news. He couldn’t just pick up and leave them all behind. No, he would not dip his toes in the
Instead, he drove through the old city on his way to the Herbert Chemical headquarters. His cooperative education coordinator had left his job open during his leave of absence; he had managed to get his old job back once he resumed his education at
Without looking for a better space, Floyd resigned himself to parking in the worst spot at the very back of the lot. He trudged through the clammy May air, a chill penetrating his light jacket and causing him to shiver more out of habit than anything else. He sighed as he passed through the front doors of the building and went by the model brine well to join a flock of people at the bank of elevators. He was the only one pushing the button to go down and when he tired of waiting for the elevator, he found the stairs and made his way to the basement.
He traversed the cement catacombs to the mailroom, where he deposited his lunch in the tiny refrigerator before hanging up his coat and going to work. The mail room was empty, but Floyd already knew what to do, it was the same thing he did every day. He sorted through the waiting tub of mail and tossed the small white envelopes and big manila ones into bins for each department.
After he finished, he loaded the sorted mail onto a cart and pushed it to the freight elevator to deliver. He staggered wordlessly through the building like a zombie and deposited mail in the same offices and cubicles he’d once hoped to work in. As he passed a gaggle of chubby, middle-aged women gathered around the coffee maker in Accounts Payable, one of the women called out in her forced, too-sweet voice, “Morning Floyd!” He grunted in reply, as he did every day; it was as though he’d never left.
He hated his alarm clock more than ever.
#
The traffic on I-775 at five o’clock was just as clogged as the traffic in the morning. Most of the Lexuses, BMWs, and Mercedes Benzes were on their way home or to the country club or theatre or whatever rich executives did after leaving work. Floyd, on the other hand, had to grind his way through the cool air with only three hours of Professor Hinch’s high, nasal voice lecturing on the glory of Earnest Hemingway to look forward to. Most of the class would sneak out after the break at eight, but Floyd—because he had nothing else to do—always stayed until the end.
The traffic ground its way to his exit and he pulled onto the road leading to
As at Herbert Chemical, Floyd no longer bothered searching in vain for a good parking spot, but rather went right to the back and took the worst space possible. The air was not as cold as in the morning—the weatherman promised a warm front would bring the first real taste of spring to the state tomorrow—allowing Floyd to walk to class without his jacket. He stopped at the doors of the
With an hour left before class, he went down the hall to the alcove where he had first laid eyes upon Abby. As he always did, he bought some coffee with his last two quarters in the hope that the caffeine would keep him from falling asleep during Hinch’s lecture. While the paper cup filled with steaming liquid, Floyd craned his neck to see if anyone else was around. Every time he used the vending machines, he hoped he would hear her voice asking him if he had change for a dollar and he would find that through some miracle she was not dead after all. Instead, he took his coffee from the machine and went upstairs to class.
He took his usual seat in the back row of the lecture hall and watched the other students file in. No one sat within two rows of him, as if they sensed he had some sort of disease that would infect them if they came in contact with him. Hinch had Floyd’s sense of routine and appeared right at the starting time. Floyd half-listened to the professor drone on about Hemingway’s compact, yet powerful prose in A Farewell to Arms and scrawled some notes in his notebook; he would never read the notes, but the task gave him something to do.
A half-dozen watches beeped when eight o’clock came around and Hinch stopped in mid-sentence. “Well, let’s take a short break and then we’ll discuss the rest of the chapter.” Most of the class gathered up their books, backpacks, and jackets before disappearing for another week while Floyd strolled down the steps of the lecture hall and to the water fountain. The cold water provided the jolt his system needed to wake up and face another two hours of Piglet’s obnoxious voice.
On his way back to class, he stopped by the vending alcove and waited. She never came, just as he knew she wouldn’t. By the time he returned to class, only a handful of other students remained, all gluttons for punishment like him. Hinch looked around the room, but if he took note of the sudden emptiness, he showed no sign. He continued his lecture as if he’d never stopped and Floyd leaned back in his hard chair.
Why am I here? he thought as he looked down at his notes. Returning to school had not rekindled his love of books; if anything, he’d grown to despise them more than ever. His plan had always been to use his Literature classes to better himself as a writer, but now that he’d given up writing, there was no point. He would earn his degree by the end of the year, a degree with no value whatsoever in the job market.
A month of resuming his old habits had not given him any direction about what do with his life. Time was ticking out; when he graduated he would have no job and would have to find something else. He would probably end up either slaving away again in the kitchen of Burger King or back at Andromeda Comics—he didn’t know which was worse.
“Mr. Jensen?” he heard Piglet’s voice call out to shake him back to reality. He looked around the classroom and saw that everyone else had gone.
“Yes, sir?” Floyd asked.
“Class is over,” Hinch said. “I didn’t want you to get locked in.”
Floyd nodded and stuffed his notes into his backpack. He sprinted down the stairs to the front of the room. “I’m sorry,” Floyd said.
“It’s all right. I’m sure it’s been difficult for you to readjust after,” Hinch stopped and searched for the right euphemism for Floyd’s absence, “all that happened.”
“It’s not so hard,” Floyd replied and tried to force some cheerfulness into his voice.
To his surprise, Piglet put a small, bony hand on his shoulder. “If you need any help, or just to talk, my door is open.”
“I’ll remember that,” Floyd growled and walked away. As he left Sanders Hall, he caught a glimpse of the pond with its bronzed geese and stopped. He walked across campus to the spot where he and Abby had met to reconcile after the incident at her mother’s house. He remembered the cold piercing through his jacket that night and shivered. As at the vending alcove, he waited there by the pond for her to appear as she had that night, but she never came.
He sat down on a nearby bench and sighed. He didn’t have anything to say to Hinch; the person he most wanted to talk to would never hear his voice again. He stared at the bronze Canadian geese in the middle of the pond until a campus police officer came by and shooed him away. Why am I here? he asked himself again as he trudged through the empty parking lot to his car. He drove home and collapsed immediately in bed; he closed his eyes and drifted off into darkness, where she awaited him once again.
#
It was Sunday, the day Floyd devoted to visiting the graves of his father and Abby. He stopped at the florist, where they had grown so used to his visits that they had his order—carnations for his father and roses for Abby—ready for him before he arrived. He paid for the flowers and drove to
The grass planted on the dirt covering the coffin had begun to grow; by midsummer his father’s plot would have the same color and texture of all the others. Floyd cleared away the wilted flowers from his previous visit and laid the fresh ones at the base of the tombstone. He ran his hand along the glossy gray stone and traced his father’s name with his finger. “Mom and Todd are doing fine,” he mumbled. And what about me? he thought. How was he doing?
He sighed and sat down cross-legged in front of his father’s headstone. “I’m not fine,” he admitted. “I just don’t know what I’m doing anymore. I don’t know what I should be doing. I wish someone would tell me what to do.”
He shook his head; he couldn’t remember ever going to his father to ask him for guidance. Only now, after his father was gone, did it occur to him to ask. Floyd scooped up a handful of dirt and watched it pass through his fingers and back onto the ground. “I wish you were still here to help me.”
He wished he had someone alive to ask for help; he didn’t want to burden his mother with his problems and he wouldn’t trust any advice Todd gave him. No one could help him figure it out; no one could tell him what he should do. Why am I here? he asked himself over and over. He still had no answer.
The more he thought about it, the more significance the question took on. It was about more than why he went to work or school—why did he still exist while Abby had died? They’d both been shot, but he’d survived and she hadn’t. She who was pretty, smart, and with a bright future ahead of her was dead while he who was a complete wreck with nothing to look forward to was still alive. It wasn’t fair. Given a choice, he would have chosen to take the fatal bullet, at least then his life would have had some meaning to it.
He reached out and touched his father’s tombstone again. “What dreams did you have for me?” he wondered aloud. When he was born, had his father envisioned a future lawyer, doctor, or Olympic athlete? Maybe his father had held him and seen a pastor, a president, or a CEO. Instead, he’d gotten a pathetic failure; a son who didn’t even produce enough testosterone to be a real man. “I’m sorry to let you down,” Floyd whispered and trudged back to his car.
He made the trip across town with a weary heart and silently berated himself as he passed through the
Floyd pulled into the driveway of
Twenty-two. She would have graduated next winter and begun her career as a chemist, following in her father’s footsteps. She could have met someone who did produce enough testosterone to be the man she deserved. She could have gotten married and raised a family—enough children and grandchildren to fill the dining room of her mother’s house. So many things she could have done if only he’d never run into her. If he’d never entered her life, she would be celebrating her birthday right now with her friends instead of lying in a coffin. “I’m sorry,” he said and wiped away the tears forming in his eyes. “It’s all my fault.”
He closed his eyes and ran a hand along the poem her father had selected to honor her memory. Why her? he wondered and wished a real angel would swoop down from the sky to explain the divine wisdom to him. Why take someone so beautiful and leave a foul worm like himself? It wasn’t fair to deny the world her promise, her potential, her gifts.
“It should have been me,” he said not just to Abby’s grave, but to whatever divine power controlled the universe. “It should have been me!” he roared again and pounded the ground with his fist.
“Come with me,” Abby’s voice whispered into his ear.
“I can’t,” he moaned and pressed his forehead to the ground. He couldn’t go with her, not now. He didn’t want to hurt his mother. He wanted to see Dale grow up. He couldn’t do it.
“Come with me,” she insisted.
“Stop it!” he shouted and looked up at the angel, beseeching her. “Stop tormenting me!”
“Come with me.” Her voice echoed across the cemetery and stretched into infinity.
“I can’t,” he whined. “I’m too scared.”
The moment the words left his lips, it was as though a curtain had been pulled away from his eyes and he understood everything. He was too scared. That night when he’d held the pills in his hand, he’d convinced himself that he could not commit suicide because of the harm it would do to his mother, but the real, more selfish reason was that he had been too scared to go through with it.
He was a coward and he always had been. Too scared to reveal his secret to anyone, he had shut himself off from everyone, including his family. He’d filled his time with solitary activities like reading and writing to avoid ever having to face the real world. He wanted to be a writer because it was one of the few professions where he could operate without ever having to interact with the real world. He was too scared to make friends; he would surely have let Abby slip through his fingers if she had not asked him out first.
Every morning, when he got behind the wheel and longed to drive to the West Coast, he let his fear guide him back to Herbert Chemical, back to the life he despised because he was too much of a coward to risk leaving his safe, familiar life. He used responsibility to his family as a cover, a way to rationalize his cowardice the same way he had when he’d flushed the painkillers down the toilet. It didn’t matter that he did love his family, he never would have gathered the courage to swallow the pills.
He reached out and touched the stone angel, the testament to his ultimate act of cowardice. He had done nothing while the gunman raped and murdered Abby. Though he would never know for certain, in his heart he knew he could have freed himself from his restraints if he had really loved her enough to overcome his fear. That he had not proved how unworthy he was to ever have possessed her heart.
For as long as he lived, he knew his cowardice in that moment would haunt him. No matter what he did, where he went, or who he met, he would always have to live with the memory of what had happened in the storeroom of Andromeda Collectibles. He could no more forgive himself for that indiscretion than he could bring Abby back to life.
“What should I do now?” he asked the stone angel. He had been a coward for his entire life, an overgrown mouse shying away from the light to hide in the darkness, but could he change? Could the mouse become a man? When the angel did not answer his question, he stood up and touched the hem of its skirt that in his dream would have taken him to paradise with Abby. “I have to find out.”
#
He meandered back towards his apartment, new testimony to support his cowardice appearing with every mile. The country club whose golf course he had befouled under the cover of darkness. The subdivisions he had terrorized with acts of petty vandalism while the owners slept. The convenience store where he had twice purchased alcohol to escape his suffering. The outcropping of rocks on the beach where he had often gone to hide from the world. And then, finally, Andromeda Comics, where he had done nothing to save the woman he claimed to love.
By the time he trudged up the stairs to his apartment, he wanted to escape his life; he wanted to become an entirely different person so he did not have to bear the burden of his myriad acts of cowardice. His teary eyes chanced upon his computer and he recalled the night when he had written what he thought was his last story. As far back as he could remember, he had used his writing as a means to escape the sadness and loneliness of his real life by immersing himself in another world. As the dark waters of despair and self-loathing threatened to close in around him once again, he needed that escape more than ever.
He turned on the computer and loaded the file for The Vicarious Future. For so long he had allowed it to languish unfinished, the reason becoming apparent as he read through it. The story of a deformed man hiding in the darkness to keep from revealing himself to the world mirrored his own life.
His hands began to fly across the keys at a pace he’d never achieved before; he lost nothing in translation between his mind and his hands this time. The words poured from him in one long torrent as he chronicled Roy Anderson’s further descent into a world of shadows. Floyd worked for hours straight until he neared the end.
He and Roy were kindred spirits, two men adrift in an ocean of pain and loneliness. Whatever ending he wrote for
Todd had been a coward like him. Whereas Floyd isolated himself from the entire world, his brother had staked out a narrow kingdom in the confines of Andromeda Comics. When marriage and family had threatened to overrun his world, Todd had left Angela at the altar and gone on the run. Only Todd had somehow found the courage to come back and take responsibility; he had married Angela and become a father to Dale. Somewhere on the road, his brother had discovered the courage he had always lacked.
Floyd knew how to end the story now.
I shiver in the cold and drape another ragged blanket over my shoulders. The fresh snow glistens blue in the moonlight and the icy wind carries the sound of voices shouting to my ears. As I huddle against the wall—the windows too caked with ice to see out—I listen to Mary’s voice admonish Ricky for not cleaning his room. Over the years her voice, once as sweet as an angel’s song, has grown as cold and harsh as the wind.
She cries more often now when she thinks no one is watching. I know the reason is the same as why I cry: the future that could have been. She still loves her husband and son, but more and more she thinks of a different life, another possible outcome. Despite all that she has, the fantasy of what might have been grows heavier upon her shoulders every day. It threatens to consume her as it already has me.
Her voice grows louder and her son responds in kind. The husband sees fit to involve himself in the squabble at that point and his participation ends the struggle in short order. A door slams, followed by only the sound of the wind. In the silence, my eyes droop and my head sags against my chest.
The crunching of snow wakes me and as I listen, the sound grows louder. Another vandal here to throw snowballs at the house, I tell myself. The sound passes only inches from me, and then makes its way to the front steps. Footsteps clomp up the stairs and to my amazement, the front door creaks open.
In the moonlight, I make out the small, bulky form of a child bundled in a heavy parka. I press myself against the wall and think about what I should do. In the eternity I’ve imprisoned myself in my own house, no one has dared try to enter. After some deliberation, I decide to see what the young burglar is after.
It is soon apparent the child is not here to rob me. He throws himself against the wall and buries his head in his hands. His tiny sobs echo through the darkness and he mumbles something that is muffled by his mittens. The child continues to cry for the rest of the night while I remain pressed against the wall, a silent observer to his heartache.
As the sun rises the next morning, I see that my visitor is no stranger, but rather is Mary’s son. Ricky is curled up against the wall after exhausting himself enough with his tears to fall asleep. Under the weight of my many blankets, I rise slowly to my feet and creep towards the child. Peeling off one of my blankets, I cover the shivering boy with it and take a step back to admire him. His chubby cheeks are as red as his coat and steam escapes his nostrils with each breath.
He must be ten or eleven years old by now. It won’t be long until he becomes a teenager, though I doubt his flabby body will ever turn hard enough with muscle to impress the opposite sex. In another eight years, perhaps he will be forced to go off to war, to leave everyone and everything he loves behind. For now, though, he sleeps innocently, just a little boy in a decaying old house.
Unable to resist the urge, I reach out and stroke his hair. At my touch, his eyes fly open and he sits up. A scream is on his lips, but his throat makes only a gurgling noise. “Don’t be afraid,” I croak, my voice unused for so long that my words slur like a drunk’s. I haven’t seen my reflection since coming home, but I know that to him I must look like a corpse returned from the grave to steal his soul. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
Ricky sniffles and wipes tears from his cheeks before asking, “Who…who are you?”
I shrug. “I’m nobody, not anymore.” I wrap my blankets tighter around myself to conceal the scarred remains of my face from him. “Why did you run away from home?”
“My mom bought a new dog,” he says and fresh tears spring from his eyes. “But I don’t want a new dog, I want Duke back.”
I nod and know I should have thought of this sooner. The milkman had hit Duke, Ricky’s faithful companion, a week earlier. I’d heard the sound of screeching brakes followed by the concussion of the animal against the truck. Later, I’d watched Mary’s husband carry the dog’s carcass to his car. “I see. Your mother only wants you to be happy. In time, I’m sure you’ll grow to love this new dog.”
“No stupid new dog can replace Duke; he was the best dog in the world,” Ricky says with such conviction that I don’t dare argue with him. Instead, I put a hand on his shoulder, and to my surprise, he lets it remain there.
“I know how much you loved Duke, but he’s gone. Nothing is going to bring him back.” Ricky looks at me skeptically. “You can’t change the past; you have to remember what he meant to you and look forward to the future. Do you understand?”
Ricky nods slowly. “I think so.”
I hear Mary’s voice calling for her son and pat Ricky on the shoulder. “You should go now. Your mom is worried about you.” I help him to his feet and usher him to the door.
On the front steps, he turns back and asks, “Why do you live in a scary house like this?” It’s a question I’m unprepared for, a question I cannot answer, so I merely shrug in reply.
Ricky takes off across my yard and manages to squeeze his stocky frame through a hole in the fence. I stand on the front steps and my heart leaps as I watch him rush into his mother’s outstretched arms. She hugs him and presses her wet cheek to his, the relief obvious in her every gesture. Ricky’s father scoops him up and the three of them head inside. Before they reach the door, Ricky motions to my house and I throw myself into the doorway, out of sight.
Later, while Mary and her husband lecture their son about running away from home, Ricky’s parting question echoes in my mind. I stare at my hands, now only skeletal claws, and ponder why I keep my vigil. Why do I huddle here, in the cold and dark, and watch Mary’s family? I’d never made a conscious decision to do it; it had simply happened and then become a habit. Like a drug addict, I did not have the strength to stop, and so had let my addiction rule me.
As I think of my conversation with Ricky, the answer to his question floats into my consciousness. By watching Mary and her family, I thought I could somehow vicariously experience the life she and I were supposed to share after the war so that I would not have to let go of her. Yet I’d always been an outside observer; I am not a part of her life anymore. I’m not the Roy Anderson she knew, but rather a pale, distorted reflection of that man.
I am too afraid to let go of her; I am too afraid to face the world alone. I have to face it though. I have to accept that my life with Mary ended the day I shipped out for
I know now what I must do.
I cannot change the past. I have to remember what Mary means to me. I have to look forward to the future. In this dark, decaying house are only the shadows of broken dreams. Somewhere out there, my future awaits. When darkness falls, I slip away into the night.
I don’t look back.
Floyd saved the file onto the hard drive and then copied it onto a disk that he packed in his backpack. He could not change what had happened to Abby. He would remember what she meant to him. He would look forward to a future without her.
With that thought, he fell asleep.
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