Fantastic, I Tell Them

They’re coming in and out now. They stay for a while, then they leave. I’m stuck in this chair, too tired to move or talk or eat, only the energy to sleep and dream. Although, dream isn’t the right word, is it? No, it’s more like I’m going back, going away for a while, like my kids in between visits. They come and sit with me or help their mother get my pills together, but then they go. That’s what I do when I sleep. I don’t dream, I go.

My son is here now. His wife is with mine, talking in the kitchen, and we're here watching the TV, watching men build houses with strong hands, hands that I’ll never know again. He asks me questions, surely trying to distract me, or else keep me awake. He’s a good boy. He’s got a boy of his own now, asleep in his arms. His daughter is running around the room, stopping now and then to kiss my knee and pat my hand. 

My eyes are getting heavy, like they do a lot of the time now. My son is saying something, but I don’t hear. I can’t fight the urge to sleep, to go back.

#

I’m a boy again. My chest is clear and so is my head, and I’m running. Me and the gang; Scottie and Jeff and Dan and Tommy. We’re playing manhunt, pretending to be soldiers like our daddy’s were, fighting pretend wars on pretend battlefields. The trees hang over the street like a golden arch, the leaves yellow and dry and ready to fall. A chilly wind blows and the sun is low. 

There is a girl at Dan’s house, his little sister, and she is shy when I say hello. Me and Dan go to his room and read comics and play chess and talk about the things little boys talk about. 

The future is like a memory, or maybe a dream, a precognition, and I know what it is, but it seems far off—unreal. Part of me knows that I’ll be back there soon, but I don’t want to go. I’m a boy again, unbroken by the world outside of Dan's bedroom window. I look up and see the breeze blowing through the trees outside, and watch the leaves fall to the street below.

#

I’m back, and my son is gone. It’s dark, my wife is sitting on the couch next to me. She looks over and sees that I’m awake, and asks how I feel. Fantastic, I tell her. Her eyes are big and puffy, but she smiles. She leads me into the bedroom and we lay down like we have for so many years, except the house is empty now. Empty for the first time. It’s quiet, and in the silence we embrace, kiss, tell each other we love each other. My pains leave, I can breathe, but I know that will change tomorrow. My chest will tighten and my lungs will spring a leak, the air will spill out like a punctured balloon.

We fall asleep holding hands, hers are tight around mine. I feel myself going away, going back, but I don’t want to. I want to stay here with her. But then I realize something; I can go back and still be with her. My body relaxes, my back straightens, my hair grows and darkens. My muscles thicken and cord and my chest fills with sweet air.

#

Dan’s sister is getting older, and so am I. Tomorrow I leave for college; a fruitless endeavor that I have no intention of seeing through, but it’s what you’re supposed to do. The clock tower chimes somewhere far off and we kiss for the first time. I know then that I don’t want to kiss another girl as long as I live, but that has to wait. For now we’re here, together for the first time, and I know that it’s not the last.

The dream stretches and swirls, shadows lengthen and engulf the scene.

I have been to college and have come back home. I’m with Dan’s sister again, and we want to get married. You’re too young, they say, laughing. We go away, dejected, but not defeated. We have a plan, a crazy plan, and it works. We get pregnant. Now they can’t say no.

She is like a ghost bride, beautiful and nervous. She pulls away from me at first, and I won’t let her forget it. Not for as long as I live. Then there is a girl, a baby. I love her and the three of us soon become four. Then five. We’re on a farm, and then I wake up.

#

Sweat pours down my face. It’s the medication, the chemo, the doctor says. My wife is on the phone and I’m drinking coffee, but I don’t want it. She hangs up and asks how I feel. Fantastic, I tell her, and she smiles. The cancer is in my brain, eating away at neurons and causing small, spasdic seizures in my arm. The radiation helped with that at first, let me eat Christmas dinner without spilling all over myself, but now I can’t even shave. 

My children are all here today, so it must be a weekend. My grandkids run around and play and no one talks about what is happening. We are all playing the part of blissful idiots, making plans for a spring that I will never see, but I don’t say so. I don’t say much at all, not anymore. More and more I want to leave here and go back. It gets easier to do so with each dragging day. It’s decided, unanimously and quietly, to stop waking me up and let me sleep. Sometimes I have a baby on my lap, usually I don’t. 

I’m drifting now, going back, leaving here, leaving them, but going to them. 

#

There’s four now, all girls, all beautiful. We left the farm behind and live in a house. It’s small and cozy and it’s our own. The youngest is in first grade, and my wife and I have a surprise day planned. It’s morning, and the world outside the bay window is cold and bleak and nobody wants to leave the warmth of the stove. I’m wearing sneakers, not boots, and our youngest knows that I have no intention to leave the house today. Work can wait until tomorrow, so can school, and appointments, and shopping, and obligations. Today’s a family holiday, and when my wife and I tell them they cheer and rip their uniforms off and change back into pajamas. 

My wife feels nauseous, and we both know what that means. I hope it’s a boy this time. 

#

My son is here, tapping my knee, ripping me out of the sweet, dream-like past that was my life. I open my eyes and he’s holding his boy. They smile, and he asks how I feel. Fantastic, I tell him.

We have dinner, and I know it’s my last. Hospital food doesn’t taste good, and I won’t have an appetite anyway. My oldest is here now, and she stays the night. It’s snowing outside. I go to bed early and my wife stays up talking with her. I hear them cry, hear them try to comfort each other and say all the things that no one says in front of me. I sleep.

#

We left our small, cozy house and exchanged it for a bigger one, one closer to work and family. It’s on the same street where Dan and I used to read comic books, and where my wife was too shy to talk to me. It isn’t Greentown, but it’s close. My father’s gone, missed but not missing. I know exactly where he is. My mother is in the same house, as are my wife's parents. We all live on the same street, and for a long time things are good.

Our four girls meet their husbands, and they become part of our family for a while. They move out, and they come back—sometimes just to visit, sometimes for longer. Our door is always open. 

My son grows, he’s almost a man now. He meets his wife, and they try to run away together. I tell him how hard it would be, but he doesn’t care. I won’t stop him like they wanted to stop me. The urge passes and they stay a while longer.

Now all of my kids have kids. They’re crazy and beautiful and wild, and they’re ours. We’re in another small house, just down the road from the one with the bay window. My son names his son after me, just as I named him after my father. I’ll be dead soon, and he’ll never really know me. Just like my son never really knew my father. 

#

I wake up shaking. My arm, my damn arm. My wife wakes up, and she reminds me of the ghost bride. She’s scared, tired, aging into premature seniority before my eyes. It’s time, I tell myself. My oldest is in the room now, stepping up, holding it together for my wife who is at the end of her rope. The sun creeps up, cold and distant, and it’s still snowing.

I tell them not to call, but they do. My son arrives twenty minutes later. His eyes are wide and wet but he smiles when he sees me. I don’t smile back.

It’s time.

They call an ambulance. They check me. Everything seems fine, considering. They ask if I’d like them to bring me to the hospital. I leave it up to them. My son and daughter drive me instead.

#

Now I’m stuck in this dream world; shadows constantly change, nothing is static, everything grows and shrinks and I lose myself for a while. I’m back in my house, I’m young and strong. Now I’m wearing a baseball uniform, now I’m drunk on a boat. Images, fading, changing, swirling. Breath in, out, in, out. I’m stuck between shadow and mind, past and present and future and nothingness. I want out, I want to go home, so I fight, but I’m weak. My son is crying in the corner of a hospital room, and then he’s twelve playing a sloppy rendition of Smoke on the Water on the guitar. 

My oldest is here, holding my hand, telling me we have to stay, they can help make me feel better. She isn’t crying, but she wants to, wants to crawl into a ball and fade away with me. Now she’s a teenager, but she’s crying. My wife is crying, but she’s angry. I’m angry, but I want to cry. My oldest is walking alone, and I can’t bear that, so I take her hand and walk with her. 

Twist.

Turn.

Laugh.

Cry.

Happy.

Sad.

Light.

Dark.

#

I’m alone, looking at the panorama of a mountain. It stretches across the landscape as far as I can see. Jagged peaks crack the sky like lightning. 

I’m dead. I know—like I’ve been here before. Maybe I have. The mountain fades, like I’m being pulled away from it, or it from me. Now it’s gone. I’m rocking back and forth, rocking a baby in my lap. She coo’s and grabs my finger. She has no features, like a blank canvas hung on an easel. I bend down and kiss her, and when I look back at her she looks like me. I smile, and she smiles back. Then she is gone. Gone to be with them.