To Feel Stuff (28 page)

“A piece for what?”

“They wanted to see if they could create orchestrated class warfare between Brown and the working people of East Providence. Yeah, good luck.”

“But how did the police find out about them?” I asked.

“One of the geniuses turned in his senior thesis confessing
everything.
Except it was written in the third person, so it was supposed to seem fictional. But the kid's advisor turned it over to the cops.”

“This is incredible,” I said. “For this I spent my senior year crippled?” I was sick (not to use the word glibly, but it's the best one for the situation), discovering that I had only been a pawn in someone else's pointless game. I had been a speck in a larger whole that wasn't even a whole that represented anything important I was so disgusted. So over it
all
.

“You know what?” I said. “Let's not talk about this anymore.” And here's the most astounding thing, El. Just saying that, I felt the incident being commanded farther away. I hate to bring up my soul twice in one letter, but really, it was like the memory was lifting from my body like a separate soul. And instead of the extra soul hovering around me, it went down and burrowed itself into the ground at that dance. It stayed buried in that spot in the middle of the field, a spot capable of holding on to the phantasms of injury and death that I knew I couldn't carry around anymore.

I like to believe that it's still there.

“Tonight's for celebrating the things that are yet to come. Let's have an authentic toast,” I said.

We all raised our cups, even David, whose was empty. “To tomorrow!” I said.

“To tomorrow!” Marna and David repeated.

“So,” I started, wanting to lead by example, “you two are going to San Francisco?”

Marna nodded. “Anyway, that's our plan. You're still moving home?”

“Yeah. My dad's friends with the mayor, who talked to him about this position they're trying to fill, and my name came up—”

I turned my head to glance up the lawn. That's when I saw a backlit figure moving like a grasshopper would if it could stand up straight. Every part seemed to move in accordance with different instructions. The top bobbed from side to side. The left side raised and jerked as the right side dropped. I watched as the figure approached me (and I remember grasping,
me,
that figure is approaching
me
) and all I could think was “There is something very wrong with that person.”

And then I realized that it was you.

(I am sorry. I am so, so sorry.)

You came under the next row of lanterns, and they lit you up, lit up your face. You were jabbing your cane into the plywood covering the lawn, raising up your body as far as you could. And then you'd keel and lurch forward again, completing another step. I know that you could not see yourself, El.

 

As I was packing up in the morning, you reminded me, “Don't forget the books you were keeping in the fireplace.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I would have walked out of here without them.” I glanced up to smile at you, and as hard as this is to own up to (I know that at least some small part of me is terrible, and I'd do anything to change it), I was alarmed by how you looked. I thought that you might be getting thinner. That was probably why you seemed stranger somehow, I guessed. And I know this is the shittiest thing to tell you, but in the spirit of total honesty, I remember thinking it was like aliens had sent you as a replacement while they took their time prodding my real girlfriend.

I only tell you these things now because I would be more terrible not to.

I zipped up my bag and then panicked for a second because I realized that I had nothing else to do with my hands. I was just standing there, lost, in the middle of the infirmary. So I said, “This is the last time I'll see this room. It's hard to believe.”

“I'll send you a picture,” you said.

And what I told you next was all true. I swear to God, to whatever I have to swear to. “There's a part of me that wishes I could pack up this infirmary, everything in it—” I know I looked at you. “And take it with me. On road trips I used to see trucks on the highway transporting entire houses. Have you seen that before?”

“No,” you said.

I am fairly sure that I said something very stupid like “Oh.”

I knew the only thing left for me to do was to pick up my bag, since that was the last action available to me. I told you I had to get going—my parents were waiting for me. That was also true.

“Okay,” you said.

I kissed you on the forehead and I had trouble breaking away. I told you to take care of yourself and I fucked up the words. I hope you have the same memory of that minute because, at least in my head, it was tender.

At the door I looked back, and I'm still not sure, but I thought that I saw some tears in the corners of your eyes. I really couldn't tell if your eyes were just tired and watering, like I'd seen before, or if you were about to cry. Like an idiot, the song that immediately popped into my head was “No Woman, No Cry,” and I was going to sing that part to you. But now I know that if I was going to be a fucking, insensitive idiot and sing anything at all, it should have been the part of the song where Marley just repeats over and over again,
“Everything's gonna be all right.”

I had almost shut the door behind me when you suddenly yelled “Bye!” at the top of your lungs. It was almost a scream. And in that moment I had to decide whether I should just run out or look back in. I looked back in because I had to know.

“What was that!” I asked you.

And you said, “A proper good-bye.”

You could say that this letter is mine. And maybe that's why it had to be ugly in places, because I knew you'd just be all the more disappointed in me if I didn't do it right this time. I tried to follow your example. That letter to me changed my life, you know. The tragic thing, at least to me, is that now, looking back, I've realized it changed me in a direction that led away from you. It was after I read that letter that I began to feel like I could go back outside.

What else could have been done, El?

WHAT ELSE?

I believe it had to happen. Or I should say that I have to believe that, or I'll be torturing myself forever. It's only been a week since I left, but I know instinctively the feeling would last forever.

I think of you often. I think of you with the strangest kind of love.

 

Sincerely,

 

Chess

The Journal of Parapsychology October 2004

 

On May 27th, I was the neighborhood FedEx courier's first delivery of the morning. Before I had even signed for the envelope, I was opening it and speed-reading the documents contained within. The EVP expert, Dr. Macrae, confirmed that the disruptions on the recording were the result of an outside force acting on the physical surface of the tape, and, as I suspected, were not the result of sounds laid down within the recording itself. Dr. Macrae went on to explain that he had seen this type of phenomenon before, where “spirits,” as he referred to them, “left a corporeal imprint on recording (both audio and visual) materials much like the living leave footprints in mud.”

Having thoroughly examined and documented the defects in the tape, Dr. Macrae concluded that they were too deliberately positioned to be coincidence. Moreover, it was his firm belief that E (and I never suspected that she had) could not have created the defects on the tape. These, he asserted, were identical to those effects produced when massive amounts of energy exert themselves upon a magnetic field, and could not be easily duplicated by human intervention. In fact, Dr. Macrae wrote that he was “pleasantly mystified that the recording device had not broken under the strain. It is truly strange that it did not.”

The “bad news” came toward the close of the papers. Dr. Macrae had been able to isolate the presence of the “spirit's energy” within the defects, not the particulars of his conversation or identity. He concluded that the apparition had left no trace of his voice, thoughts, or emotions. Dr. Macrae even attempted to uncover a “track” underneath the defects, where perhaps the apparition's energy had organized itself into an urgent thought. Sadly, there was no such track.

Thus, we had our first concretized proof of supernatural activity, but it did not move us any closer toward discovering who the apparition was.

I was startled when the phone rang just as I began tucking the papers back into their envelope. After reading in depth about the apparition's imprint, I'd been left feeling as if he were in the room with me. For a split second, I believed that when I picked up the phone, I would hear an otherworldly cacophony—the apparition attempting to tell me the rest of his story.

There was a living person on the line, however. It was my old friend Dr. Wainscott, the same man who first told me about E.

He spoke. I listened. Before he'd finished, I was grabbing my car keys from the bowl in the entryway and running out the door. Later I would find out that I'd not hung up the phone, but left it on the floor.

Very uncharacteristically, I drove eighty miles per hour the entire way to Health Services. My speed only seemed to make the rest of the world move more slowly—the lights, other drivers, time itself. When I pulled up to Health Services I was giddy with anticipation, and I distinctly remember that I did not want to take the extra half second to lock my car doors. Not to place a spiritual bent on the moment, but material concerns did feel very irrelevant.

Because it was Saturday, the building's front door was locked and I had to ring the bell. I rang it more than once. When Vivian appeared, she was exasperated, and gave one of her suspicious looks, which produced déjà vu within me. I flashed back to the first day that I'd met her in the infirmary and, unwittingly, insulted her observational abilities. On the doorstep, I experienced the uncanny sensation that my own life was repeating itself.

I jogged to the top of the stairs with Vivian trailing behind, still perplexed by my behavior, and when the desk came into view, so did E. She had the phone to her ear and was facing in the opposite direction.

“E!” I called, and she spun around and called back, “Mark! I was just calling you!” Her finger was still in the process of entering my number and she lifted the phone to show me.

Vivian, trusting E's judgment and ability to fend for herself, announced that she had to go finish some work in the lab.

I placed my hands on E's shoulders, unintentionally shaking her as a result of my own raw nerves. “Listen to me,” I said, “I have big news.”

“I have
huge
news,” E responded.

“Please, just listen to me,” I continued. “Please. Ten minutes ago I received a call from Wainscott. Yesterday a patient was checked into RIH, E.” I heard my voice ringing inside my head. I was heating tones that I rarely utilize. “There was a patient admitted to the psych ward, and then diagnosed with tetanus. Wainscott found out this morning. E—”

I wanted her to seize this moment with me. While her face remained jovial, she did not seem to be grasping the magnitude of what I was telling her.

“E,” I said, “the patient was recently discharged. And. He is. On his way over. To the infirmary.”

“No,” E said, shaking her head.

“Yes! Yes! It's difficult to grasp at first, isn't it? This changes everything!”

“No,” E repeated. “He's not on his way over. He's
here
.” I remember the bottom of my stomach dropping out, and then turning around to see what or who was at my back, suddenly taken by the feeling, once again, that I was being watched. “Where?” I asked, my voice now closer to a whisper.

E motioned to the closed door of the infirmary. "In there,” she said, sharing a look of astonishment with me. We stared at the closed door, barely able to ponder the answer contained within.

“But this means—” I said after two silent minutes had passed, looking back toward E.

E finished my thought. “This means that I haven't been reliving someone else's past.” Her eyes grew large, locked on mine. “I've been seeing my own future.”

We had been looking in the wrong direction.

Earlier that morning C had departed the infirmary, and from what I could infer, the parting had not been pleasant. E would not share much about it.

Once she was alone, E told me that she looked at the beds, all made up except hers. Then she lingered on the impression of her body that remained pressed into the mattress. “I am a candlestick,” she remembered thinking, “and that's my box I go back into.” The realization that the room was hers again hit powerfully, and she claimed to have felt ownership reverting back to her. She said that she underwent a psychological transfer, becoming cognizant of every single property of the room as if she had been away on vacation and “only just came back.”

Overwhelmed, she walked out of the infirmary to take a brief respite before she reclaimed her space.

Passing Vivian, E remembers noticing the nurse filling out a new patient's admissions forms, and she thought to herself, “Oh. Someone else.”

E followed the main hallway down to its end, then turned the corner. At the farthest examination room, she lowered herself against the locked door and rested on the floor. She was resolved to stay there until the hallway dimmed for evening.

She estimated that almost forty-five minutes later, the apparition came around the corner. Upon seeing her, he stopped and said, “Hey.”

“Come on,” she said, shaking her head. She felt her eyes brimming with tears.

“You? Right now?” she accused.

“Give me a break,” she begged.

It was this last sentence that struck E with recognition. She froze. They were repeating themselves.