Fell of Dark (16 page)

John

JESUS WEEPS FOR LAZARUS.
Out of His sadness, out of His love, and with all the power of God behind Him, He raises Lazarus from the dead. He calls a man dead four days out of his grave. This more than anything else gives Jesus His enemies. No one likes a show-off. The cross was a matter of time.

What's the lesson? Did sadness and love allow Him to be nailed up? Or did anger and revulsion force the hammering?

ecce homo
: Behold the man.

mandatum novum do vobis ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos ut et vos diligatis invicem

This means, in my translation of a translation, “I'm giving you an order, okay? Right now, a new one. Love each other. Love each other like I've loved you.”

Yes. I'll try. I will always try, even if it makes me sad, gives me headaches. Even if it crucifies me. I have to remind myself, the crucifixion might be a relief.

You see? Sometimes I think I've given up on you. Can you feel this? Maybe I lied to myself about you. I ask myself over and over again,
What's her name? What's her name?

Stupid. I have no real reason to think you exist. I could be wasting time. Normal people have more than one girlfriend and even more than one wife. Why should I wait?

I tell myself to wait because you'll make everything worthwhile. I tell myself it's okay to be lonely and to suffer and bleed because you'll solve everything. I can't be the only person on earth to go through life like this. I'm not utterly alone. There are others like me. You're like me.

Brothers

“I'M NOT SURE IF
you would be friends or enemies.” The man from the Barnabas kitchen, Kermit, with one dead daughter and one living son, was talking. “I wouldn't want to have an enemy your size, but I can't say my son would choose to be your friend. He's not at a soup kitchen. I'm not sure where he is. Or maybe it's me. I haven't been home in a while.” He swallowed a chunk of bread. “You don't talk. The silent type. He is, too. Maybe you'd sit together without a word between you. I'm thinking it'd be more for him than for you. He'll soak up your gentleness. I frankly don't know what you'd get in the bargain. We can't choose our brothers.”

I nodded and shrugged, and he took my arm. “He may never come here, but you'll have to meet sometime, somewhere. I'm sure of it. Or maybe I want it for him. I don't know. You two are marked for each other.”

Even if I'd wanted to speak, what could I have said? There's only one person I'm destined to meet. A wife, not a brother.

Frustration

WHO GUIDES ME? WHAT?

I walk, read, think, write, and row. Is this a purpose? This is my to-do list.

What is being prepared for me? Tell me. Tell me.

Why?

GOD GIVES US MYSTERIES
to solve. Most of the time, these mysteries have to do with other people. Why do people steal from their mothers, murder children, burn down houses, sell drugs, rape, bomb markets, bulldoze forests, and hit men on bicycles with their cars and drive away? Why do people fight fires, enlist in the armed forces, chase muggers, become brain surgeons or monks, sell flowers, or teach eighth grade?

Some people have a meaning we can't figure out. They show up in our lives from the mind of a god, out of thin air, they stay for a little while, they show us our life, its future or present, and then they disappear. They fall through a drain. They burst into flames. They starve themselves. They walk away. A disease takes them. They die.

Joan

THE THOUGHT OF JOAN
makes me want to sleep. What else should I do? I get so sad. I thought for sure you came as Joan. I thought your name was Joan. I was wrong.

Spring, and I'd just finished my last final. I stood on the train platform during rush hour, shifting my weight from one foot to the other, waiting for the uptown express. Normally, I'd have chosen to walk rather than take a train or bus, especially when I felt restless, but I had to make a rowing practice. I'd already learned how to be gentle with a boat, but I was still getting strong. I looked along the steel tracks for the light of a train hurtling through the tunnel. Nothing.

That's when I noticed a girl reading a plain white paperback. She seemed too thin to be real, the silhouette of a girl projected onto a column. I couldn't see her face behind her hair. The train pulled into the station, and the girl stuffed her book in her bag. She hooked her auburn hair behind her ear, and I thought I recognized her. The face I once saw in my winter breath, almost transparent, ghostly.

You?

The train, brakes screaming, slid to a stop, and I hurried toward the girl. I'm tall and strong, so I could push through the crowd. People told me to watch it, but I ignored them. I wanted to get on the train with the girl. When the doors closed behind me, I looked up. She stood facing me, but there was a man, a wall between us, and he smelled of sweat and hair gel. I hated him. I looked at the girl's face. She was in college, I thought, eighteen or nineteen. She had different-colored eyes, one blue and one brown, unreadable, and a short, fine nose. Her thinness—. Her flower-print tank top and blue jeans gave her presence; otherwise, she might not have been there at all. She caught me looking at her, and I turned away, ashamed and frightened. I know how tempted I am by the impossible.

When I dared to look at her again, she was reading her book. The title of it was in French,
La symphonie pastorale.

The train lurched. I hadn't noticed it stopped between stations. It pulled into the next station, brakes squealing and squealing, and I wondered if the girl would get off. She didn't. Neither did the man between us, and there was no room to move. The train shuddered, bucked into motion, and the girl, who was turning a page, lost her balance. She would've fallen into the woman on her right if I hadn't put out my arm, knocking the man in front of me. I caught the girl by the shoulder, and she said, “Oh.” Her shoulder was small and soft in my hand. I thought I'd hurt her, and I pulled back. Her frailty vanished, leaving an emptiness in the middle of my palm, an emptiness heavier than the weight of her body. I could see the imprint of my thumb in her skin, like a burn.

“All right?” I said, ashamed by my brutishness.

“Yes,” she said, recovering. “You've got quick reflexes.”

The man who smelled of sweat and gel sighed audibly and jerked his shoulder, as if from an unwanted touch.

The rest of the way, I couldn't look at her again. I hated myself. I felt stupid and oafish. Here was the girl I once saw in my breath—I still thought it was you—and I'd hurt her. She had skin soft as my breath. I was rough and stupid: I couldn't touch a girl; I couldn't take care of a fragile thing. Like Lenny from
Of Mice and Men.
I wanted off the train. If only I could've opened the doors then and there, the train in motion, and jumped out onto the tracks, escaped into the tunnel. I'd had thoughts of talking with her, but now I was glad for the wall of a man between us.

The train rolled into the station. I couldn't stay on a moment longer. I faced the doors and put my hand up against the glass. My hand was huge, an animal's paw, a bear's paw.

The doors opened.

I took the stairs at a run. Up, up, up I ran, into the perfect intelligence of sunlight and loneliness.

Except I wasn't alone.

Wait. Where are you running off to?

How could she—? Her voice came from inside.

Stop running. Stop. Turn around.

I turned around, and there she stood, not even out of breath, coming off the stairs to the subway.
Why did you run away?
Her voice still in my head. Did her lips move?

“I thought—. How'd you follow me so fast?”

I flew.

I believed her.

What's your name, giant?

“Erik.”

“Erik?” She spoke out loud suddenly, excited. “Thorvaldsson?”

“Thorvald—?”

“The Viking murderer and explorer. Father of Leif.”

“Lynch. But I always wanted to be a Viking.”

You look like him, all coppery and shining.

“What's your name?”

Joan. Walk with me, Erik Lynch.

“I can't. I'm on my way to the boathouse.”

“I know.” Out loud again. “Walk with me, instead.”

“I—”

“Haven't you been watching? Haven't you seen me? I'm dying.”

Silence.

“I didn't want to think—”

“You can't avoid it. Walk with me.”

“Okay.” She took my hand. Hers was so fragile, like a leaf. “What do I say?”

“We'll walk for a while, sit in a park, and then we'll say good-bye. I think I have a handkerchief. I'll clean up your blood a little.”

“My blood.”

“Yes, your stigmata. Then we might kiss. After everything, you'll think about me for the rest of your life. I'll be dead in a month or so, maybe six weeks. But we won't see each other again. I won't tell you where I am. I won't tell you my last name. I'll be the wife who'll never be your wife.”

At that moment, I knew, I knew for sure, she couldn't be you. She said all the right things, but—. How could you die before we lived? Impossible.

“You can't be my wife.”

“I mean—”

“I know what you mean. If you'd survive whatever's killing you, then, maybe.”

“Walk with me.”

“You're just going to leave me sad.”

“No, I won't. Erik, come with me.”

We walked. It doesn't matter what we said or where we went. I pretended for a little while she was you. We kissed, and when we kissed, the world flipped downside up. I picked her up in my arms, and she laughed. “Put me down.”

“You don't weigh anything.”

“I'm almost dead, and this is the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me.” We sat down on a bench. “Witness,” she said, crying. “You're my witness.”

I nodded, and she let out a deep sigh.

“Would you do me a favor?”

“Yes.”

“Hold me. Until the crying stops.”

I cradled her, and one of us groaned. You'd think I'd lifted a tree instead of a dying girl. Everything felt heavy. All the silence. I shook. I could hardly take her weight. I pressed her nose and mouth against my shoulder and snuffed out the sound of her weeping.

Fate

I'M CONVINCED I'LL DIE
young. I wonder if even you could help keep me alive. My father died surrounded by all my mother's beauty and love. True love doesn't prevent death. I used to think it did.

I've got my invisible wounds. I can't stop bleeding.

I give blood for blood, and I'll be dead before I'm twenty. For me, the sky and earth are the same. There's no division, no horizon. I'm always walking in fog and mud. I have no idea where I'm going, but I'm going straight, straight toward the center and straight away from it. There's no east or west or north or south. There's only one direction. You and death, in that order. I can almost touch you, and you're as far as the South Pole. I'm a clown and a genius. I'm alive and as good as dead.

At the moment I die, everything will clear up. The sky and ground will separate. I'll hear your voice. I'll carry a man out of a fire or save a child from drowning. All done.

Finally, I get it. I understand. I'll die, and you'll have to find another husband. You'll be too young to go without love for the rest of your life. You'll have two husbands. I'll only be the first.

I don't think I've ever been sadder than I am right now.