Breathers (13 page)

I didn't know what to make of this dream, but I came away
from it with a good feeling, a definite positive vibe. Maybe it was a false hope, but I couldn't deny the atmosphere inside that limousine.

We were all happy.

For the next half an hour, Helen forgos the regular meeting structure and we all talk about what we'd do if we could do anything we wanted without having to worry about what we were or how we looked or what anyone thought. That is, everyone else talks. I write on the chalkboard and make grunting sounds, with an occasional shriek that gets everyone laughing again. Even Carl joins in and manages to contribute constructively. He's still an ass, but he's the kind of ass you'd like to have around because he knows he's being an ass, not because he thinks his behavior is acceptable.

“Okay,” says Helen, looking at her watch. “Before we finish up, I want to remind everyone that next Friday is our Bring a Survivor Meeting.”

This excites me I think more than the others. I haven't told anyone about my petition yet because I plan to bring it to the next meeting, when our numbers will be doubled and I can get twice as many signatures. I don't know if that will matter, considering that legally they're all worth about as much as a politician's promise, but I'd rather send off my petition with as many signatures as I can possibly get.

I'm also excited to see Ray and the twins again. At least Ray. Maybe he'll bring along some jars of venison for the group.

“Now,” says Helen. “For the remainder of our time, I want everyone to pair up with another survivor and practice giving and receiving honest, emotional contact.”

Tom, who is sitting next to Rita, pairs up with her before I can make my move, while Jerry bolts over to Naomi, leaving me and Carl sitting at opposite ends of the semicircle, staring at each other.

“Oh for Christ's sake,” Carl grumbles, then stands up and walks over to me. “Come on, Andy. We might as well get this over with.”

I stand up and more or less embrace Carl, face-to-face, though I'm four inches taller, so I'm looking at the top of Carl's head. His hair is graying and matted, his scalp dry and flaky. He needs to shampoo more often. He also needs a stronger deodorant or body fragrance. But I can't exactly complain.

Hugging is meant to give us the feeling of acceptance, of emotional and physical comfort, to remind us that we're still human beings. So far, all I've felt is awkward. I'm not homophobic, nor am I in a constant state of arousal like Jerry. But I don't think the exercise is providing anything but the opportunity to remind me that my left arm is as useless as a deflated basketball.

“Focus on how this makes you feel,” says Helen, walking around the room, speaking with a soft, gentle voice. “Don't think about how this relates to a prior memory or to a feeling you want to recapture. Remember, we're not here to dwell on your past. The past was your existence before this.”

She's said this to us before, at almost every meeting, and told us to reinforce the idea with positive visualization that focuses on
now.
So what you're supposed to do is start with your first memory after the accident or the shooting or the dog mauling. This is what matters. This is where your new existence began.

hen asked about their first memory, most Breathers recall breast feeding, riding a tricycle, being afraid of the dark, getting dressed for bed, discovering their bellybutton, playing with bugs, their first day of school, their first stuffed animal, or their first Christmas.

No one remembers their birth.

Getting evicted from the womb and squeezed out through the vaginal canal. Your skin covered in amniotic fluid and placental blood. Emerging into a noisy world with strange smells and blinding lights. Someone with a white mask and gloves grabbing your soft, malleable head with a pair of forceps.

No wonder newborn babies cry.

My new existence, my zombie birth, began with the realization that little girls would drop their ice cream and run away screaming at the sight of me.

How's that for a first memory?

I guess it could have been worse. I could have reanimated while the mortician was packing my body cavities with autopsy gel.

In addition to memories we'd like to repress and self-image complexes, the undead suffer from a host of afflictions that
would challenge even the most compassionate and skilled therapist. Of course, most of these afflictions are caused by Breathers.

I'm thinking about Annie.

I'm thinking about how I'm not allowed to see her. Or talk to her. Or write letters or e-mails or communicate with her in any way. I just want to know how she's doing, to know that she's okay, to know that she's coping.

To simply know that she
is.

When your life is ripped away and you're reborn into an existence of undeath, nothing seems real. Not what's happening to you now. Not what the future holds. Not what you remember of your past. Now is too surreal, the future too bleak, and the past has been inherited and sold and donated and auctioned and stored in a place where you can't be reminded of everything you've lost.

It's even more unreal when the wife and daughter who shared your life are gone. Poof. Like a magic trick. One moment you're in a car driving home from a party and the next, you're a zombie staggering home on the side of the road. Except you have no home. You have no wife. You have no daughter. They've been erased from your existence. No good-bye letters. No keepsakes. No pictures. Nothing to let you know they ever existed. Sometimes you wonder if they ever did. Sometimes you wonder if it was just a dream you were having until you woke up into your present nightmare.

I never saw Rachel's body and I missed her funeral, so I have to take my parents’ word for it that she's buried beneath her headstone under six feet of prime real estate in the Soquel Cemetery. But at least I have a headstone. A marker. Some kind of tangible proof that Rachel existed, that this is what happened to her while I was temporarily dead.

With Annie, there's no proof. Nothing tangible. Nothing I
can point to and say for certain that I know what happened to her. That she's still alive. That she ever existed.

I'm thinking about this as I'm watching a young girl about Annie's age who is staring at me with big, blue O's, her curiosity framed by blond pigtails like the ones Annie used to wear. She's wearing pink pants and pink boots and a pink zip-up sweatshirt with an undeployed hood. All around and behind the little girl, in the periphery that extends a good thirty feet from the park bench where I'm sitting, more than a dozen adults are yelling and screaming, horrified at my presence. Not the little girl. She's less than ten feet away and as calm as the Dalai Lama.

And why shouldn't she be? I'm not hurting anyone. I'm not threatening anyone. I'm just sitting on a park bench with my dry erase board around my neck with the words
Zombies Are People Too
written on it in bold, black letters.

A few of the adults yell at me from their safety zone, threatening me with bodily harm if I so much as touch the little girl. Funny how none of them are brave enough to approach the inner circle and actually rescue the little cutie from the big, bad zombie.

The little girl looks at my face, glances down at my sign, then back up at my face as if she's trying to figure something out. Finally, she points at my chest, at my proclamation of equality, and says, “Is it true?”

I nod.

Before the little girl can ask me another question, her mother sprints in like a rugby player, scoops up her daughter, and carries the little girl away, leaving me alone in my thirty-foot radius of Breather buffer.

Given more time before her mother showed up, I wonder how much progress we could have made. I wonder if the little girl would have sat down next to me. I wonder if I could have
answered more questions. I wonder if it would have made a difference.

I'm sure the little girl will ask her mother and father about the zombie she saw in the park today and the sign he was wearing around his neck, and she'll ask them if it's true. Are zombies people, too? I'm sure her parents will explain to her that zombies are not people. Zombies are dirty, disgusting creatures and she shouldn't ever touch or trust them. And I'm sure that, as time passes, she'll grow to believe it.

But I'm hoping she'll ignore her parents and think for herself. I'm hoping she'll persuade her friends to think the same way. I'm hoping that eventually I'll be able to sit on a bench in the park without a thirty-foot boundary of fear.

I'm still hoping this when the Animal Control van pulls up.

'm sitting in my room Wednesday night, eating Oreo cookies and drinking a $350 bottle of 1982 Chateau La Tour Haut-Brion, watching
Jaws
on Bravo and wishing I had some truffles.

Upstairs I hear my parents moving around, arguing. I can't make out what my mother's saying, but my father keeps shouting phrases like, “Goddamned sideshow freak” and “What's so wrong about donating him to science?” I turn up the volume on the television to drown them out when someone knocks on the back entrance to the wine cellar.

I'm not expecting company.

My Breather friends have all developed a convenient case of amnesia that wiped away all traces of the friendships we shared before my reanimation. Occasionally I see them on my way to the meetings. If they're wearing smiles, the smiles vanish when they see me. And though they never shout out slurs or derisions or join in with the laughter of other Breathers, they always look away.

None of the other survivors from the group have ever come by to visit and it's not like I've ever invited them over. I'm sure my parents would love that—a room full of zombies
sitting on the furniture and stinking up the house, playing Trivial Pursuit and listening to Green Day or Bachman Turner Overdrive.

I wonder if Mom would serve mimosas.

The knocking comes again, more insistent this time. Maybe it's Rita, stopping by to see if I want to take an evening stroll. But I don't let myself believe this, otherwise I'll be disappointed if it's not her. Whoever it is, I hope they don't mind Oreo cookie backwash in their Bordeaux.