Family (7 page)

the singer struggles.

she strains, breaks, thrashes against the current, digs her heels into the
now.

she heaves, hiccups, twists with pain, bright and swift.

she bleeds.

i listen to sounds.

they come to me, unbidden.

choked, thick, drenched with helplessness, they come to me.

unbidden.

the singer pleads, cries, begs. wants to live.

she moans.

her voice is soft, but somehow still unmistakable amidst the deafening mayhem. it rises above the screaming, gaping, oozing chaos. i hear her. shelly hears her. there is no way to not-hear her.

she seeps. from somewhere deep, someplace inescapable.

she is, suddenly,
everything.

i shudder, stagger, heave. i shut my eyes, open them again.

i take in shelly.

my sister, my secret, inside self—shelly.

i see her. take her in.

she is hovering, poised above the singer, who is little more than a husk of herself, really, little more than her own half-life.

the singer is emptying out. hollowing.

maybe shelly is, too. maybe we all are.

maybe this is our
now,
the
now
that we have finally come to, collectively, pedaling furiously, foolishly.

paddling directly into the eye of the storm.

shelly pauses, wipes the back of her palm against her forehead, leaving a streak of rust-colored blood stark against the blank expanse of her pale skin.

she is marked. she is endless. she is forever.

she is
now.

i want. i
so
want:

i want to take the entire broken, bleeding household. the singer and her friends, her
family.

i want to scoop up all of the bodies—gentle bodies, now rendered limp and life-drained. to close the chasm between
here, now,
and
infinity.
to ground them. to keep them afloat.

i
want.

inside.

my hands are streaked with blood that is not my own.

inside, past the threshold. but still, somehow apart.

my hands are streaked with blood that is not my own, and the horror-movie sound effects persist.

<…>

interference

white noise.

torrents of skin and bone.

skin and bone, and blood. so much blood.

rushes, tidal waves, well-deep reflecting pools of blood, raging everywhere, catching in every corner, flickering and taking hold like a thick, coppery fever.

i burn.

i melt.

i sink.

i drown.

bodies.

there are bodies everywhere. and the bodies are broken.

we are all broken. we are all supernovas. black holes, disintegrating.

we are all crushing, pulling, recoiling, unraveling.

we are all collapsing in on ourselves,

like dying stars.

i never did believe in heaven.

if i had, after all, perhaps then,
then,
i would have embraced my own infinity, once upon a time back home, in my mother’s anti-fantasy; perhaps i wouldn’t have welcomed the cascade, the tidal wave, the rushing torrents of pills.

perhaps then, i would have let go of the
now
.

but.

to me,
afterlife
has always sounded like an oxymoron, like the type of dirty trick the

cloud-shapes,

the cloud-shifts—

the creeping, smothering cloud covers—

the type of trick they play on your mind during those moments.

during those brief interludes

when you dare to let your guard

down.

afterlife
is little more than the broken promise, the unfulfilled premise of something intangible,

something ephemeral.

something like a wisp, a whisper;

something like the unfathomable suggestion

of a whole and perfect day.

a blink. a hiccup. imperceptible.

a violation of the tidy, tidal, either/or.

afterlife
is like the undertow:

always pressing, churning, roiling.

but never
now
. never realized.

never, not ever, something to rely upon.

i never did believe in heaven.

i am still not completely sure of what i think of hell.

“it’s time, mel. get dressed.”

my eyelids flutter.

i struggle, briefly. thrash against the hour. strain to pierce the eggshell-thin, frail, fragile veil between conscious and light, between coma and wake.

between
now
and
infinity.

i have a stupefying moment of
who/where/how,
and then realize all at once, in a dizzying rush, a flood of
yes
.

oh.
yes.

a barrage of
come to now
.

i realize:

it is time.

i cough, press my palms hard against the open-slatted floor, feel the ridges, the grooves and indentations, feel so much past-life, history, so much
before
, burrowed, carved deep beneath the surface.

i stretch back from my mattress, rise. my bones make a hollow, creaking sound as i stand, shaking off sleep.

the creaking, the pops and hiccups, they startle me. they are the sounds of my skeleton snapping into place, the sounds of my skin, bone, sinew, settling. of my pockets, my pieces, my shadow spaces, expanding and contracting with my every bated breath.

they are the sounds of my body reshaping itself, readying itself.

reeling.

they are the sounds of the opposite of solid.

it is time.

it is late. it is the witching hour.

junior’s face hovers, inches from my own.

i sense him, feel the edges of his skin ooze, radiate, pulsate with energy, with anticipation, with
yes, now, always.

junior
wants.

it is the type of
want
you could clutch, you could grasp; the type of
want
you could wind around a crooked finger.

through the tar-thick, viscous cover of night, i can feel it, the
want
, constricting across my shoulders, weaving about my collarbones like a frayed noose. i can inhale and breathe his
want
into me so fiercely that i can almost taste its rancor.

can almost pretend it’s my own.

almost.

it has been too long, here on the ranch. here in ersatz-everything, here without windows, without edges, without

far too long.

so much so,
so
long, that it has begun to feel that our
infinity
, our collective orbit, might be fading. losing shape, strength, elasticity.

might be fraying.

might be washing away like an etching in the sand as the tide comes in and slowly, steadily—but irreversibly—erases what once was. leaves only the
now
. unwinds, unravels infinity, indefinitely.

i am not surprised to realize this.

after all, infinity has always felt impossible to me.

there is nothing, after all, that doesn’t end.

Henry is our preacher, our anchor, our window.

He tells us the gospel, according to

Him.

(as if there were any other version than His. as if there could ever be.)

His favorite sermons are those that tell of unity, of harmony, of a message carried by music. He pens His own lilting rifts;

His scores reverberate,

punctuate the rise

and fall

of all of our hours.

together.

His melodies are our hymns, and every day that we sing with Him,

for
Him,

we are supplicant.

we are one.

family.

still.

Henry’s music, His message, it is too powerful,

too bright and wide to be contained.

He—
we all
—want to share it. to sing it to the people. to the entire vast, expanding universe.

in concert.

Henry loves a concert. He
does.

it is the only piece of the
then,
the ever-
before,
that

He is willing, even eager, to dwell upon. to share with us.

music is a collective history, a catechism that unites.

music
is Henry’s
always
, the way that mirror-mel and uncle jack and

all of the stages of the rolling tide

are my own.

the way that they mark my own inner history,

the way that they echo a refrain that only i can hear.

Henry’s favorite story is a sunken treasure of a memory. it is a tableau that becomes more vivid with each retelling, becomes an out-loud fact, a sensory reality.

something that envelopes us, orbits us.

all
of us.

Henry loves the story of woodstock.

He tells us: woodstock was an overrun concert, held in an open field on a borrowed farm.

it was free love and music and magic.

crowds, clouds, consciousness.

and bodies.

gentle bodies, tangles of hair, skin against skin as the rain beat down.

one family, open, warm, receptive.

and when Henry speaks

i
hear
Him.

see myself there.

can see, so clearly, so sharply, why music is Henry’s message.

i can see

how:

for a boy who was once traded

for a pitcher of
beer

the notion of woodstock—

of bodies and warmth and

harmony—

it must have been:

a welcome hum

of promise.

a
premise—

an ancient premonition

of how He would eventually come to

conduct

our life on the ranch.

“woodstock was a message,” He explains, “and people heard it. the
man
heard it.”

woodstock was unique, the sort of experience that created shifts,

swift and nearly imperceptible.

woodstock is like Henry:

self-contained. ephemeral.

magnetic.

Henry has His own message, of course.

His own music, His own magic.

His own love.

and people will hear it.

Henry has designs.

Henry has thoughts about being famous, being real, being

important.

being noticed.

as though there were someone who could possibly
not
notice Henry.

as though there were

anything, anywhere,
anyone

other than Henry.

He has ideas. one idea, specifically.

He wants to start a band.

not simply your standard folk music, understand; Henry’s band would be more than our mingled voices gathered at the campfire.

more than our words, our sounds, our songs, intertwining with the plumes of smoke, the lapping flames, the spreading heat.

the fever.

it would be more.
so much
more.

it would be His word, His truth,

gospel.

it would be
everything.

because
Henry
is
everything.

and
He
will always,

always

need

more.

Henry’s band—our
family’s
band—

our word, our truth,

it would spread

wide as woodstock.

wider than any moment from

anyone’s

ever
before.

Henry says that music is love. and terror.

Henry knows. always. everything. He
knows.

and so.

there is a certain terror amongst us, the members of His family; a fear that comes from the suspicion that Henry will always need more—

more than
us,

more than we are,

more than we can ever be.

He needs a platform, wide as woodstock,

wider than the infinite ocean.

wider than our family’s orbit, we fear.

and so

we sing

for Him.

in love.

(and fear)

we sing.

for Him.

we have no windows to the outside world.

here on the ranch, we are self-contained, like russian dolls nesting each within a larger hollow. we fill each other up, fit snugly inside each other’s membranes, each other’s open spaces.

we link. we interlock.

and
we
are all that we all need.

for always.

Henry says, “everything belongs to everyone.”

still, He is the only one allowed to watch the television set.

He is the only one of us with access, with passage, with a window to the outside world.

He is the only one with contact, with connection.

with
interference.

as He should be.

we know: He shields us for our own protection. out of respect. love. like a father would.

He shares, of course.

(of course.)

of course, He shares the meaningful news with us. He assures us of this. He is careful to pass along any information with meaning.

as though there could be meaning without Henry to imbue it.

(as though.)

but. He does. share.

this, we trust.

(in Henry, we trust.)

He
is our father. our everyone.

He is our window.