The Big Dream (14 page)

Rest.

It's ok.

Check if you are breathing. You might have stopped, for the pain or the shock of the drop.

Breathe.

Check for breakages: limbs, spine, heart.

Are you breathing? Are you broken?

It's ok. Whatever the answer, it is ok.

Breathe.

Open your eyes, even though stairwells are unattractive places, and illuminating windows are unlikely. Regard the grey or beige or greyish-beige walls. Concentrate on their solidity, immobility, inability to do you any harm . . . or help.

Help, or something like it, will come. Heavy footsteps on the landing above you indicate a man with some sense of his own authority. Whoever it is, it's probably no one whose presence can comfort you. You will want your partner, but remember: he
doesn't want you, and just signed the lease on a bachelor apartment. You'll want to sob like a rock star, or scream like a soccer-mom, or curse like a CEO, but don't.

Wait. Wait and see what happens next.

Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Don't cut off your nose to spite your face.

Don't get too big for your britches.

Don't quit your day job.

Wait on your stair, whatever stair you've managed to stop at. Lie still.

No matter who is up at the top of the stairs, don't bother to try to look business-casual, to stop crying and straighten your clothes, tuck your hair behind your ears, to stop being hurt or heartbroken or human. Don't even wipe your face – you'll just smear snot, tears and blood across your nice clean cardigan. Blood stains everything, you know.

What is going to happen happens, and that's “Hey, you ok?”

Don't let the colloquial diction fool you. This query is not light. He can see blood on your shin, on the side of you mouth from the fall, and the bruise on your collarbone from last weekend. Even the old bruise hurts now. Your calm, even breathing does not obscure the pain. You aren't fooling anyone, you know.

He will probably touch you, on the shoulder or arm perhaps, because the bubble of business-casual propriety has already been breached by injury, tears, snot. And instead of irritated or sexually harassed, you will feel very slightly comforted by this stranger's touch, and then profoundly ashamed of that.

Think about your ergonomic chair upstairs, the strength in your spine.

He'll say something strikingly banal, like, “Fell?”

Something will clog the back of your throat: maybe blood, or vomit, mucus, dignity. You open your lips and nothing pours out, which is something. But no words, either, just the silence of
your bloodied lip, a tooth-bitten cut, not internal hemorrhaging. Remember that you've made your own damage.

The man's tie dangles into your eyeline, and then he lowers onto your stair. He puts his hand back on your shoulder, and says, “Well, don't fret, I'm on the health and safety committee – I know what to do. We gotta assess the damage.” He reaches into his jacket pocket.

Your leg is probably broken, just above the ankle, where the bone is close to the surface. Something there is digging and jagged, you feel it without looking down.

Don't look down.

Fine, if it will make you feel better: adjust your cardigan to cover the bruise, but remember that this man doesn't care.

What he pulls from his pocket is not a splint, bandages, sedatives or liquor. It's a cellphone, just like yours, the one that comes free with the two-year contract.

If you are still woozy from the drop, it might help to focus on something solid and singular. Focus on this man's flushed face, his stubble under the silver cellphone as he presses it to his big flat ear. His voice bounces loud off the hard stairwell walls, “Hey, Steve-o. Gregster here. We've got a faller on the southwest stairs, below three, damage to the . . . the fe . . .”

You know he wants to say
femur
, because that's the famous interesting bone on television medical dramas. But that's the thigh bone. That's not the one you broke.

Watch him think and think. He doesn't
know
what bone you broke. But he comes up with something; he is a man doing his job and he does it ok. “Damage to the shin bone, plus pretty shaken up. Call it in, wouldja? I'll get'er down. Bring a car . . . yep. Ten-four. Roger. Ok. Bye now.” He does it smooth and fast enough, you have to give credit there.

He meets your gaze. He has swimming-pool coloured eyes. He says, “We have to document this,” and you think, suddenly, of all the documents on your desk, things undone. A certain number
will never be needed, true, but certain mailings are important, pressing, will be noticed if undone.

You have a headache that could be a concussion. Your lip is bleeding onto your cardigan. You think your right top incisor is loose. And your leg is broken. You feel dangerously close to whining.

There's an invoice that needs to be sent out. You should do it. You probably could do it, if you could lean on this gentleman beside you, or someone. You've been trying to get ahold of your ex-partner all week to give him back the guitar picks and combs and Kerouac of his that you've found. But you think he's screening, or he's changed his cell number.

Don't be too concerned about what's been left behind.

The phone is still open, silver bright. The man isn't speaking on it anymore. He speaks to you instead. He says, “Hike up your hem, please.” Staring into the depths of his chlorinated eyes, you wonder what he means, until he looks down at your strange-angled ankle, and you understand what you have to do.

You have to.

If you think to say,
Tibia
, don't, he'll find out. If you think to ask him how many sick days you are entitled to, don't, you'll find out. If you've been thinking about calling your ex's mother, his bandmates, that supermarket checker he sort of likes, and telling them all of his crimes, don't – they'll find out.

Be a class act. Be the bigger person. Be a model employee.

Pull the cuff of your Gap on-sale dress pants gently, smoothly, away from the jut of bone. Don't worry about making the folds even. Don't worry about what this man, Gregster, is thinking, or seeing, or judging. You are colleagues collaborating on a project, the project of accident documentation.

He is saying, “We just gotta record this, you know, for the accident report.” It seems that this is not a written report, though, since he doesn't ask you a single question – not your name or your pain threshold or why you find yourself in this strange lame
building. Not even whether you are single, if there isn't someone who loves you that should be called on the health & safety cellphone. He won't require a word from you, just flick the phone until it's a camera. He doesn't care, and neither should you.

Then, before you fully realize the state of your blood-painted face, your rucked-up clothes, akimbo angle of your leg and the edge of collar where that bruise might show, he will have taken your picture. Frozen forever, bleeding in the stairwell, in your cardigan.

Don't cry.

Don't even hate him. What else could he do? For you, a stranger with eyeliner running down onto your clavicle, breath all hiccupy, tears tangling your hair, his best emotion is probably only pity. For you in a similar nest of misery last week, your ex couldn't even manage that; only rage that you aren't what he wants, though he thought you were.

Let it go, all of it. You don't really have a choice, anyway. The Gregster is already sliding his palm around your shoulders.

When he says, “Allyoop,” push up on your unbroken leg, but let him take as much of your weight as he will. Let your body press into him to keep from falling. It's ok; this isn't sexual, though it's hardly professional. Though he might be blushing as you try to balance, you have no cause to be embarrassed; his job is to help you in this your hour, or week or month, of need.

Don't cry.

Just walk down the stairs.

Don't think about the severity of the breakage, the horror of crutches on public transit, improper stairwell maintenance, or invoice day on Thursday. Don't think about the drawers in your dresser that are empty because he took all his socks and underwear, but don't think about the time he called you a waste of space in front of your brother, either.

The short-term disability, drug-plan reimbursement, gift baskets will all come through to you, just like the forms you filled out
so carefully back at the beginning promised. You will wind up with six-weeks of full pay before you must return to your overdue-invoice encrusted desk. As the fragments of your tibia slowly knit back into place, so will a lot of things, or at least begin to. In the meantime you have only to hop down the stairs, straighten your blouse, cry if you must but delicately and without snot. Be the person Steve-o expects to see when he brings the car around.

Breathe.

Keep going forward.

You have a job to do.

SYL HAD PUT UP PICTURES of Brian in every room in the house – she had the ones Evan and Angie emailed printed at Black's because she wanted the baby around all the time, as if he lived in their house instead of so far away. The snapshot in the kitchen was from the boy's first moments on earth, flushed and scrunched, pink and blue, wailing and naked. Even Laurence could admit he smiled at the little striver whenever he opened the fridge.

Under the gaze of the magneted picture, Syl had been cooking all day. Margarine tubs of stew, lasagna, and taco casserole, labeled in ballpoint on masking tape, were bricked in the freezer, fortifications against her husband's ruin.

When Laurence finally, slowly came downstairs from the office, Syl was at the counter, chopping vegetables. The room smelled of unseen fruit and sugar. “Get everything done?” She began plopping celery sticks into an orange Tupperware half-full of water.

He sat awkwardly at the kitchen table: left hip canted up, weight on the cane, watching her. “Mainly. Muellers' dog barked for a while. Got a couple emails to write up tonight.”

“I hate that damn dog. Those boys take advantage of you; you retired so you wouldn't have to write emails in the evenings.”

Laurence grunted.

Syl sighed. “So there's celery in the orange and carrots in the blue one, and I'll do just one salad because that will wilt after the second day . . . .”

“The travel agent got back to you?”

“It's booked.” She hacked sharply through the flared part of a celery stalk. “Direct to Seoul. The lady said I got a good deal for $1,200.”

Laurence whistled. “If you say so. I still don't see – ”

“It's not like we can't afford it.” Syl waved her hand, seemingly dismissing the whole abundant house, thick drapes and satellite radio and all. “Angie called me in tears, Laurence, and Evan could barely form a sentence, he was so tired. Brian cried nearly the whole night. Again. At least I can sit up with him.”

“Evan and Angie are almost 30. They'll survive.”

“Well, of
course
. But we could help them do a little better than that.”

Laurence watched her snap the lid onto the orange container. “
We?
”

“There's still room on the flight . . . ?”

He pictured his webmail homepage, all those bold-faced unread messages, the nuclear-bright streets of Korea.

“I'm still healing.” He gestured down at the knob of swell and bandages bulging through the knee of his trousers. “And the boys at the office, you know . . .”

“It's
been
healing a while now. And Ev is your
own
boy.”

“Sanjeet and Mark
ask
for my help. Ev, thus far, has not.”

The oven timer dinged, turning her towards it.

“You're really going to go, just cross the world? Do you even know about the lunatic in the north and his missiles? How are you going to get to Evan's place? You can't just expect everyone to understand English.” He imagined Seoul ominous and vague, narrow streets, shouted strangeness, labyrinthine confusion.

She gripped the oven door. Blue veins showed in her thin white skin, but it was still smooth. She was three years younger than Laurence; if she'd worked, she wouldn't have been retired yet. “Ev will meet me at the airport.” She opened the oven, bent her round bottom towards him. “Well, at least the pie turned out.”

“You know I've never cared for sweets.” For some reason, this had always been a lie he enjoyed telling. “And if I needed something, I'm sure I could make it myself.” That one was new.

“Well.” Syl straightened with the pie and hipped the oven shut, hard. “This one cherry pie is for Mr. Carbone. Not sweets, just sweet.”

“Corey Carbone?”

“You can take it over tomorrow. I saw him go out this morning, and with the Muellers' cats around, I hate to leave it on the step.”

Laurence leaned back in the chair and a gentle pain swabbed at his knee. “Those cats are a menace – should be able to leave a pie for a few hours without fear. I'm gonna plant some marigolds next year.”

“It's bugs that hate marigolds. You'll take the pie to Mr. Carbone?”

“Fine. But what do cats hate, then?”

“You, I'd imagine. We have to leave in three hours.”