The Reversal of April 2nd

April 2nd, 2011

I close my eyes. It takes effort, but I force them down with finality. I don't want anyone to look into them and see how my world has crumbled, to see the confusion and pain, the placidity and acceptance. It's much better this way. This way I could be asleep, this way I could be at peace, this way my eyelids could hide that last bit of life slipping.

I count my breaths. One, two, (a brief pause) three, four. They slide out noisily. Five, (a longer pause, I wonder if this means I'm getting closer?) six. Had I really been doing this all my life? This Herculean task, this breathing. It feels like it takes so much. Seven, eight. So many parts moving at once: chest, mouth, throat, lungs. It seems so complicated now. Nine, (this pause was longer still, maybe a minute, maybe an eternity) ten. Eleventwelvethirteen, fourteen. They start to cluster together, as though making up for seconds they failed to fill. Fifteen.

I hear the door open and a pair of footsteps approach my bed. I briefly consider opening my eyes to find out – shit. I lost count.

“Oh God, Dan. Look at him. He was so good last week. The doctors must have screwed up, maybe they need to switch his meds or –”

“Kell, I don't think there's much of a point to that now.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Take it easy Kell. You heard what – ”

“What the doctor said? Is that really it for you? Honestly, one guy gives up on your dad and you just –”

“Damnit Kelly! Just stop. Stop pretending. There's nothing we can do. And there's no other way this can end... Really we're kinda lucky.”

“Lucky? I'm so sorry Dan, but maybe the fact that my dad is dying doesn't make me feel as lucky as it makes you.”

“You know that's not... I mean we're lucky to know. It's not like with mom. We've got a chance to, you know, prepare. To say goodbye. Not everyone gets that.”

I inhale deeply and feel a rush scratch against my throat. I had forgotten to breathe, so enraptured in the words flowing around me. They sounded distant and garbled, echos across a canyon. I was drifting.

“I guess... I guess you're right. It's just. It's just so hard. Seeing him like this. I thought he was getting better. I really did.”

“It's okay Kell.”

“What if he, you know? What if he never wakes up?”

“I don't know. Um... do you wanna say goodbye? Just in case?”

“Uh...yeah. That sounds like the thing to do. Um... Daddy? I don't know if you can hear me. But if you do... if you do I want you to know that I love you. I love you so much Daddy. Mitch is out on a business trip. I know you never liked him all that much, but he'd want to say goodbye too. He always talks about how much of you there is in me. Daddy? Please, please, don't give up. I know what they're saying, but you remember that story you told me? The one with the mouse, with the moral that anything was possible? Anything's possible, remember? So don't give up. I don't want you to feel bad if you can't, but if you can, please try one last time. For me?”

Kelly's voice cut crisply through the fog. It pounded in my head. All the background noises, the little things distracting me, they faded away, if only for the moment. I want to tell her how sorry I am for not being stronger, and how much I love her, and how I wish I had told her that every second of every day, and how it's one of my greatest regrets that I didn't. But all of my energy is spent on breathing, and the words never escape my mouth. Dying is very inconvenient for conversations.

“Your turn.”

“All right, here it goes. Dad? Not sure how much you can hear, or understand at this point, but I figured I might as well say goodbye. Not that I don't expect you to be up and about again. I just...uhh... I want you to know... Look, I know it hasn't always been easy. Some of that is probably my fault. But no matter what I said, you were my dad, and I loved you. No matter what. I know it's probably a little late for this... this really would've been a better talk to have with you when you were awake.

How about this: you wake up, and I'll say it all over again. From the beginning. You know how uncomfortable that'll be for me right? So yeah, how about that for a plan Dad? Anyway, in case it doesn't work out, I just want to say goodbye. And that I'll miss you. I really truly will.”

I am not asleep. I don't need to “wake up.” I just have to force my eyes open, to give a sign that I had heard and understood. Maybe they could look into my open eyes and see. Not the pain or the suffering, but the love. The love and the pride in what they had become and the apologies for my transgressions. And how I wished for just one more day with them. Just one.

I focus all of my energy toward my eyelids, but, no matter how hard I try, I can't make them flicker open. I had chosen my path, and it was over now. I had closed my eyes with finality, and the price of finality is that you don't get a chance to go back. You don't get a chance. To. Go. Back.
__________________________________________________

April 2nd, 1994

“I still think it's all wrong.”

“Hon, please.”

“It's backwards is what it is. She's done it all backwards.”

“Not today George. God knows, I hate putting up with it every other day. But not this day.”

“All I'm saying is that it used to be there was a way of doing things. You find someone. You test it out for a few years. You get married. Then you start living together. She's been with this guy –”

“Mitchell. Not this guy. Mitchell. He's going to be your son, so you might as well start calling him by name.”

“He's not going to be my son.”

“George.”

“Maybe for a couple years. Maybe. But this thing Kelly has with him, it can't last. She hasn't thought it through. She's starts living with this guy after what, six months? Then a few months later she's engaged? It's wrong, it's backwards, and it can't work Helen. It just can't.”

“...You done?”

“I think so.”

“Good. I didn't want you finishing that rant while you walk our daughter down the aisle.”

“Look. I don't want to say it, but it's –”

“Of course you want to say it. You always want to. Yes, she's going about it a very different way than you and I did, but it's a different time. Things change. And as long as Kelly's getting married, you better just put on your proud and supportive face. And don't even think about questioning her judgement. Especially not today.”

“It's just... this Mitchell guy. We don't even know him.”

“If it wasn't him, it'd just be somebody else.”

“I just wish I had some time to get used to the idea.”

“George if you had twenty years, you still wouldn't be okay with this.”

She leaned in to straighten my tie, and I lost myself in the wall behind her. My emotions contradicted the tone of my hurried whispers; I was unhealthily happy. I knew all of the reasons I shouldn't be, I knew all of the complaints I should – and did – have, but the rightness of this moment transcended. It felt scripted, precisely placed in time so the director could orchestrate the scene into an ideal moment. And here I stood, just waiting for my tiny role in it all.

“There,” Helen said, satisfied. “Now at least you look like you're in a wedding. Just don't forget to act like it.”

Her lips brushed my cheek, and we floated over to our positions in the church entryway. Helen stood just ahead of me, awaiting her turn in the procession. And I couldn't take my eyes off her. Thirty-four years melted away, and suddenly I saw a different church in a different time. She had been a vision that day. I remembered wondering exactly how I got into that position, being the man awaiting perfection at the altar.

A blare of organ music snapped me back to the present, and I looked across the hall. I saw Kelly and she was a dream enveloped in white.

As I moved toward her, I tried my best to contort my face into some semblance of pride or reassurance, but I think my nerves twisted it into something closer to nausea or indigestion. Realizing my facial muscles weren't getting the job done, I looked straight into Kelly's eyes, bluer than the waters at the finest beaches I'd never seen. And she looked back into mine, and we both found what we needed to move forward. As arms linked, I couldn't help but wonder exactly how I got into this position, being the man walking perfection to the altar.
__________________________________________________

April 2nd, 1983

He would be here any minute.

A meticulously sorted pile of his things sat in the hallway, waiting patiently for an owner to return. It didn't have to wait long.

The screen door gave a grating screech as it swung open, apparently unaware of the delicacy of the situation. Daniel struggled with his suitcase at the doorway, and I wordlessly helped him through. He began to compact the last of his old life into a more mobile form. The old clothes, the papers, the pictures, shreds from every odd corner of his existence prior awaited their chance to join his new life, his new world.

After a few misfires, he managed to piece them together and zip shut the remnants of who he used to be. His fingers wrapped around the handle and jerked the suitcase upright. Everything was gone save for the two of us, and we stood, drowning in the silence. I tried to think of words. Words to heal the wounds still gaping. Words to undo damages and words to bring everything back to where it used to be. But they weren't there.

I still loved him of course. I still saw the boy I had raised, the seven year old who had nearly committed involuntary arson down trying to bake me a birthday cake. The five year old I had pushed so hard on the swings that he almost believed he could fly, the three year old who could make me laugh and surprise me in the most wonderful ways. He was still there somewhere. Of this I was sure.

But then there were the new parts. The parts that were strange and indecent and ate away at those memories like a virus. They distorted him, made him into a shadow version of the boy I knew. I looked at him and I saw half a person, someone devastatingly incomplete.

I wished I had been blessed with Helen's tolerance, her ability to accept that which she cannot change. Maybe then I would have reacted differently when Dan told us he was gay. Maybe I wouldn't have told him that “this better be some kind of sick joke.” Maybe shouts of mean half-truths wouldn't have erupted, maybe it wouldn't have ended with me roaring at him to get out of my house. Maybe.

I heard the words he said, how this was “who he was,” and how “he couldn't change it if he tried,” but I couldn't reconcile them with the innocent child I raised. I couldn't reconcile them with everything I had assumed up to that point, that it was Godless and wrong and disturbing. I wanted to, I wanted to be able to look at him without feeling the revulsion gnaw away at my stomach. But I was too old, and the preconceptions clung to me like tar.

Dan nodded to me as he turned to leave, and I reciprocated. As the screen door swung back and forth behind him, I wondered at the cruelness of a world that required so much change.
__________________________________________________

April 2, 1973

“It's too late.”

“Pretty please? I'll fall asleep right after, cross my heart.”

“Too late for what?”

Helen walked in on my on-going negotiation with our daughter. We alternated telling her bedtime stories, Helen doing one night and I the next, just as we had with Dan before. It was my turn, but twelve hours at work had drained at the part of my soul required to invent fanciful tales of wonder and joy. I looked at my wife pleadingly.

“I was just telling Kelly about how it's her bed time, and how we don't have time for a story tonight.”

“Mommy, please let Daddy tell me a story. I'm not tired so I wouldn't even go to sleep anyway.”

“Huh. Well, Dad, you can't really argue with that. Sounds like it's story time.”

She smirked at me, clearly enjoying herself. I found myself longing for the clear patriarchy of my parents.

“Okay, okay. We'll have story-time, but just this once. Next time, you'll at least have to try and sleep. Deal?”

“Deal! Can you make it a a story about a princess Daddy? Mrs. Morgan, told us a story about a princess today. She had slippers.”

“Well, it's your lucky day. Because I just so happen to have the best princess story in the world tonight.”

“Even better than the one with the slippers?”

“A million times better than the one with the slippers.”

Her eyes widened, impressed by my statistic.

“Once upon a time, there was a little girl, just like you. And she was the most beautiful little girl in the whole kingdom. Now there was a mean, ugly witch in the kingdom, and she was very jealous of the little girl for being so beautiful. And so she cast an extra-mean magic spell transforming her into... a mouse! And the only way to break the spell was to be kissed by a prince. Naturally the little girl was very upset, because what prince would ever want to kiss a mouse? So the little girl went down by the river and cried little mouse tears.”

I mimed an exaggerated boohoo, hoping for a giggle. I loved Kelly's laugh; it sounded like wind chimes tickled by the softest breeze. But she was too enraptured. Her eyes, bluer than the waters of the finest beaches I hoped to see, were swimming with anticipation. The pressure mounting, I searched in vain for an ending. And so I continued, hoping that it would just happen, as the best endings always do.

“As she wiped her tears away with a blade of grass, she noticed a frog crying not too far away. She asked, “Why are you crying, frog?” And the frog said, “I was once a handsome prince. But a mean wizard cast a spell turning me into a frog. The spell is only broken if I am kissed by the most beautiful girl in the kingdom, but who would ever kiss a frog?””

“The little mouse girl felt sorry for the little frog prince and kissed him on the cheek. But because even as a mouse she was the most beautiful girl in the kingdom, and even as a frog he was still a prince, they both turned back into who they were.”

“The prince was so excited to be a prince again that he asked the little girl to marry him on the spot. Obviously, she said no because she was much too young to even think about getting married. But thirty years later they had the best wedding in the world, with every mouse and frog in the kingdom receiving an invitation. And they lived happily ever after.”

“What was the moral? Mrs. Morgan says we should always look for the moral of the story.”

I paused but then saw the obvious cop-out.

“Well, what do you think the moral was? Tell me and I'll let you know if you're right.”

She scrunched up her face in concentration before looking up confidently with an answer.

“Anything's possible. Even for a mouse to be a princess.”

“Exactly.”
__________________________________________________

April 2, 1957

The stars were shy. They didn't come out all at once, but instead punched individual holes through the inky black canvas until they owned the night. Helen and I lay there, sandwiched between darkness and earth, lost in the worlds above us. I absorbed the light, the glimmers reaching us just now from stars long since dead. It used to be that stars were supposed to tell the future. And in a way they still did. Lives shimmering on in the wake of death; invariably, that is the future of all things. Helen nudged me out of thought and broke the silence.

“Do you think we'll still do this? When we're married?”

“That's still months away. We'll worry about it when we get there.”

“I'm serious. I don't want to stop doing this. I don't want us to change.”

“It's just a ring Helen.”

“I know, it's just that... it feels like it should be different. Being married. And I don't want to be different, George. I really like the way we are.”

“So do I.”

“Good.”

Our eyes drifted off of each other and back to the night.

“Promise me, George.”

“Promise what?”

“Promise we won't change.”

“I promise we won't. Cross my heart.”

We turned away from what lay above. And the universe shrank. The stars blotted out one by one. The moon dissolved into darkness. The earth disintegrated until the patch beneath us was all that was remained. And then there was just us, two beams of light in the void.

“So you won't ever stop loving me?”

“Never.”

“And you'll never leave me, no matter what dumb excuse you have?”

“Not even for the best excuse in the world.”

“And you're not allowed to die either.”

“Nope. We're both going to live forever.”

She sighed, and combed her fingers through my hair. She had the most delicate touch.

“It'd get boring though.”

“What?”

“Living forever.”

“Fine. Then we'll live just long enough. No more, no less.”

“Promise?”

“Cross my heart.”
__________________________________________________

April 2, 1941

“It looks like he's out.”

“Finally.”

The words drifted in through my open door, and I laughed on the inside. If I laughed on the outside, I'd lose. I needed to be completely still, otherwise they could tell that I was pretending. It may sound easy, faking sleep, but there's an art to it, more than just being still and shutting your eyes. You have to breath nice and slow, have it come out all deep and orderly. If you don't, they'll catch you nine times out of ten. I paid close attention to my breaths, counting them in my head.

“God, I forgot he could look so peaceful.”

“It's nuts isn't it? One minute, he's this wild animal. The next, he's knocked out like a baby all over again.”

“I know. During the day you forget. You don't see it when you're chasing him around and he's knocking the chairs over. But when he's asleep. It's like nothing's ever changed. All I can see is my little baby, snug in his crib. Do you think he'll ever stop being that baby?”

“He'll grow up. Everyone does.”

“No, I know that. I mean, do you think he'll ever go to sleep and not turn into who he was?”

“What I think is that it's late. And you're not making much sense. Come on, hon. Let's go to bed.”

I heard their footsteps fade down the hall, their bedroom door open and shut. I needed to wait, to make sure that they were gone. My mother's voice rattled around in my head. I was not a baby! She maybe thought I was, but then, she also thought I was asleep. So clearly her opinion couldn't be trusted. I had grown, had changed, had become something bigger, smarter, stronger. I couldn't possibly be the same.

Seconds ticked by, and I was tempted to make my move. But I knew it hadn't been long enough. As long as I didn't mess it up, I would have these secret hours to myself. I would slip out of bed and read my comic books or look out the window and connect the stars. Or maybe just make up a story in my head. It didn't really matter what I did. The fact that I was doing it, that I was stealing time from the night and making it my own – that's all that really counted. A minute had passed, and it was still quiet enough to hear a mouse's heartbeat. It was my time. I opened my eyes.