A candy-colored clown they call the sandman
Tiptoes to my room every night
Just to sprinkle stardust and to whisper
“Go to sleep. Everything is alright.”
I live in someone else’s house. They want me to leave. I know so, though no one’s
said it. I’m can’t be certain they know I’m there, but still, I know something about
me stirs their attention and they want it gone. They’re a nice enough family. A
married couple that fights like cats and dogs, the sort that drove each other crazy
in their youth and continue to drive each other crazy, but they sense the line.
They have a daughter about fourteen years old and a dog about eight years old. I
spend my days with the dog, when I’m not trying to leave, and my evenings with
the daughter. I lie under her bed at night and pretend she’s there with me and
someone else is above us. The dog is surprisingly emotionally taxing. I sit on the
sofa while she sleeps and talk to her during the day. I feel that I should be writing
her memoirs for her. I mean, here we have a creature that will pass in and out
of life without anyone noticing her, just noting the moments she begs for food or
attention. It’s sad to me and I console her, but she ignores me like everyone. Still,
she wants me to stay, at least.
Outside the house are trees, a forest, full of hiding places. At night, lights roam
the forest, flashlights with voices. I hide from them and never hear any footsteps,
just see the moving lights and hear the voices that talk about finding me. There
used to be two others living in the house, two others like me. A young boy and a
woman. They could see me and we would talk and find silly ways to pass time, but
they both left. I don’t know if the lights got them or if they made it through the
trees.
Sleep is troubling. I’m not sure if I ever even do. It’s not uncommon to open
a door inside the house and step into a room other than the one I expected to
be there. If I do sleep, I dream of sleeping elsewhere in the house and wake up
where I fell asleep, but I’m not sure this really happens. I have my own room and I
think the family knows it’s mine. All my things are in it and I spend a great deal of
time packing so I can leave. I don’t find idle pleasure in the monotony. It’s a frantic
task that somehow never gets done. The boxes keep piling up without taking
up anymore space and the closet and shelves and dresser never get any emptier.
I stay at it till I cry then I go off to find the dog to feel sorry for her. It keeps
the self-pity at bay.
My one true pleasure are my baths. I dissolve in the water if it’s hot enough, so
I fill it with scalding water. The house has an oil furnace that pumps hot water
through the radiators in the rooms so the tap water is very hot. I dissolve as soon
as I step into it and can still see the ceiling, so perhaps my reflection floats on
the surface, though I don’t know. As the water cools, I start to feel it and wind up
real again and shaking in a tub of cold water. It’s especially fun in winter because
the water has to get very cold for me to be real again.
The sideways door is the one I don’t understand. It leads to a stair case that
I hobble up precariously to a bay window at the back, by the water. The water is
clear any time of year, even in the snow and ice it doesn’t freeze, and the sand is
warm and white on the other side. Children play there, watching me and pointing
sometimes. I wave at them if I’m feeling brave, but they never wave. They just
point. I don’t know if I’m some sort of puzzle to them or maybe an object of ridicule.
Perhaps they’re pointing me out to the family that I live with. I’ve named the
two boys Shawn and the girl Beth. The Shawn with long, dirty blond hair is Beth’s
boyfriend. The other Shawn pines after her. There will be a new Shawn in two
weeks, but the younger Shawn will still be there, pining away for Beth. She symbolizes
something to him, something I remember but can no longer feel so I can’t describe
it. If I were to describe loneliness to you or anger, I would have to remember
feeling lonely or angry and conjure a shadow of it within me and describe that
as I felt it. But what she symbolizes to him, I no longer have that ideal within me,
so I can’t summon it to describe it. I only know that it’s very important to him, too
important for him ever to have her.
I have planned my escape through the sideways door. I think perhaps one night,
when I’m brave enough, I can make it through the woods, staying clear of the
moving flashlights, and get to the water. If I stop being real though, in the water,
I’ll be trapped and never make it to the other side. Maybe that’s the closest
thing to escape there is. They really don’t want me here, and it gets harder every
week. Maybe if I knew my name, that would help. I haven’t heard it spoken in so
long, I can’t imagine I’m right about it. I’ve avoided the abbey in the basement for
too long.
The basement is cavernous, soaring rock ceilings, with a path of pavers leading
down to an abbey. I remember a joke a construction worker who wanted to sell a
paver driveway to my parents made long ago about how easy they were to repair,
but I’ve thought it so many times, the joke isn’t funny and I don’t like to think it
anymore. There are memories interred in the abbey, in the stone, mad and striving
to understand God. But the shredded pine bark mulch between the pavers is warm
even in the dark so I wonder down there but only halfway. Inside the abbey is a
staircase, a long spiral staircase leading into the dark, wrapping in wide circles
around a glowing white crystal as tall as the highest building in the college I went
to before I lived here. It’s not something I want to touch, but it holds all the secrets
of the house and of the family, and maybe even the truth about me that I
crave but don’t ever want to know the whole of for fear of shame at hoping for
more. When I think of it, I imagine that picture of the Grinch, with the Christmas
cap on, holding the house and everything in it his hand, before his angry, piercing
eyes. But I’m not a kid. Christmas isn’t missing. The crystal and past it are the
way free. If my memories didn’t frighten me, maybe I’d venture into the abbey
again, one last time. If I had a friend, the daughter, maybe I could. Thinking, I can
picture us, all of us, me, the family, Beth and her Shawns, heading into the abbey
past the screaming memories in the stone, to the alter and maybe a wooden
plaque above it, “This way to the great hell.” At least, then, the family would know
why I stay.
Tonight, the daughter will join me under her bed. The flashlights are a swarm of
obese lightening bugs. The unnatural white swarm is too near the house, the parents
are screaming, the father is drinking, the dog is barking, the daughter is already
in her room, and I am picking at the stiches in her quilt, reminding her that
she’s just a little girl, not strong like her father, not strong like God, just a little
girl. I know she hates me, though I’m not there, because I’m not there. That sort
of thinking is dangerous and I should avoid it. It smacks too much of things that
might have been, of crazy. The walls in her room are very tall. Even the bookcase
doesn’t come close to reaching the ceiling. I like the bookcase, but there aren’t
enough books there for her tastes. The plate her grandmother left her, thin, thin
china that she had to fight to keep near her. Oh, and the pictures of the things
between the things she should not do. It’d make you smile if you knew how compactly
her life is held in those moments. I’d call it sad if ever I heard it was funny,
but don’t truly care enough to comment on it unless prompted to. The sad, frightened
girl beneath the quilt doesn’t care enough for anyone else too, not at her
age. I forgot how to love her a few days ago and don’t know why I’m not in my
own room. “Never,” is the only thought that comes to mind. Irate, I stop tugging
at the stitchery and stare at the ceiling, rising atop the high walls. “Is it better
to think never or to think nothing?” I ask, doleful that I’m not heard. I think nothing.
The ceiling will rise till it cracks and the black beyond rains it’s shadow into the
room, shushing the bedside lamp for the wait. The tears come and I slide under
the bed. I hate that man. She weeps when he screams and I tire of it, of it all so
much, so much I might burst when she weeps. We set up the beds and I play nurse
and she plays doctor and we tend to the sick until her insomnia breaks and I can
talk to her in her sleep. She hears me then. It’s nice.
The whole world here is full of under-the-door light, playing off the carpet fibers,
shining on the wood. But it’s moonlight. How does it make sense? I only know
the footprints I leave in the shining azure carpet and the ripples that trail behind
me on the wooden floors. The little boy lives in my room at night. He isn’t like the
others nor like me, though perhaps it is only that I am grown. He sits against the
wall with his arms folded before his knees and rocks back and forth. This place
hates everything and it weighs heavy on him. If I tire enough of the daughter . . .
I don’t want to think. I don’t want to know. I hope someone stops him from whispering
before my own past is revealed in his steady slur of words. He’s afraid of
me. I moved in under the daughter’s bed because I couldn’t stand anything about
him. He’d look to me every so often and say, “Do you?” Then he’d return to murmuring
and rocking. I beat him with a tire iron I found in one of my boxes while he
wept. He’s afraid of me now. I know that’s best. He could likely lead me to safety
through the flashlights, but at the risk of humor, packing is still an issue. I’d hate
to have to come back for something. I suspect I created this world, that I am God
here, but a slave. It bends to my will, but dictates my nature as it does so. There
are too many things that I dare not attempt. Perhaps I am afraid and not God at
all.
I am on the sofa again. The television is on because the father believes it comforts
the dog while the house is empty, slow television piped in from Norway like
muzak. “What’s the capital of Iceland?” I ask the dog. “In Reykjavik, which street
contains the most coffee houses? Maybe your iPhone knows. Do you want to ask
your iPhone? Be a good boy and ask your iPhone.” The dog just stares at me without
lifting her head. “Will you at least rethink my life? I’ve tried, but all I see is
fear, desperation, and aversion to change. Can you ask your iPhone to rethink my
■■■■■■■ life?” My eyes tear up and I grab the remote, but there are buttons on all
sides of it and it’s impossible to do anything without depressing at least two buttons
simultaneously, so I drift in the bathroom to get high in hopes of being better
able to play the remote or perhaps forgetting it wholesale. After a few hits, I
notice the plaque above the toilet that reads, “Lyndon B. Johnson Shat Here.” That
was there before. I’m sure of it. The plaque opens to a wall safe that holds more
drugs. I take pills with water from the sink and step into the tub to melt. Come
evening, I take more pills, watch the daughter listen to music and talk to friends,
then smoke cigarettes while I watch her parents ■■■■. Their sex is interesting.
Both have filthy mouths and sometimes I chuckle at what is said. I sit on the
dresser as she screws the dirty, needy fuckhole he calls a shitter. He’s apologizing
for a ■■■■ he was with while she reminds him that his ass belongs to Mommy. Things
are not so bad tonight. I need to remember to use drugs more often.
In the cold of the house, I squeeze through the sideways door and climb to the
window that overlooks the water. The lights on the other side mock me. In one is
a silhouette. A woman with raven hair behind a gossamer curtain. My heart stops.
I want so, so much to love her, to know her, to sit forever and talk until we both
know entirely what it is to be the other. Then she turns and is gone. My mind buzzes
with obsession. Another moment never forgotten, another dream tossed on the
pile. I will never find anything in here to desire, and conversely have not grown to
desire any of it. I sit in one of a long row of chairs, bent forward with my arms
on my thighs, and wonder when I will visit the abbey again. I never learned how to
draw and so I kneel on the floor and trace out lines in the blood that flows from
my fingertip. It all washes away in the liquid moonlight. I continue for some time,
worried I might bleed to death otherwise then curl up on the floor to sleep.
This could all pop in a flash into shreds that couldn’t even be real and would unravel
into nothing, the way people disappear when they die. Is this finality? Substance?
Soul? I kicked out one of the balusters on the staircase the other day
because it wasn’t truly on my side. That’s a lie. So many things would be untrue if I
had, but I don’t care for the way it quavers out of time with the others. I wish the
owners would call someone in to have that fixed.