Saint Anthony Frankenstein

3:00 am, three sharp bursts of noise break into the thick comfort of sleep. They tell me you’re gone.

She disappeared.

It’s a tragedy.

Nothing to be done.

I sit, body numb, as the echoes of some old wives tale about the ‘witching hour’ rattle in the quiet fear of my skull. Painful anticipation and shock crawling up my spine. In some sick spite - I wonder whether to pray, the sour taste of initial grief coating my tongue and twisting my mouth into some begging incantation.

No, I decide. I am not a believer.

Not in God, and his mysterious (random) and knowing (cruel) ways, and not in this.

‘Gone’ is too swift and too final. An osprey falling from the sky, talons gripping and tearing you away from me. It is unfeeling, unmoving, cruel and cold. Its decidedly, and definitively, not you. Warmth incarnate. If you’re ‘gone’, then how does your voice follow me everywhere? Crying as the wind howls through the street, whispering in the soft pitter patter of rain and laughing through the crashes of thunder. How am I meant to believe you left me alone - when I feel so haunted?

***

Anthony…

It’s not my name. Not on paper, or book, or record. Not by history, future or law. But it’s what you called me. A label assigned from my ability to find, and track, and trace. To reach where others couldn’t - wouldn’t. You told me I was gifted, that I remembered where others forgot. I was more patient, more understanding. I just thought I was thorough.

So, somewhere around the 5th hair bobble, and the 9th phone charger, you started to call me Anthony - Saint Anthony. Patron Saint of lost things. It was blatantly heretical. Especially when you would knock, a lopsided figure in my door, rosary in your hand and wicked smile on your face. Features knitting into desperation as you begged me to spend yet another afternoon scavenging for a lost necklace. I would feign inconvenience, of course, in grand sighs and heavy shoulders. Elongated vowels and and mock exhaustion. Yet somewhere around the 7th Hail Mary, I always gave in. I came to like it, in honesty, the power of intimacy that came with being able to trace your steps, to crawl within your brain and soul, to make my home in your mind. It was a power that nobody else could measure. A reason for which I would always be needed. Be wanted.

Soon, nothing paralleled watching your face light up, features lifting like the sun bursting through the blackest of clouds, when I would stand in mock defeat with a glittering accessory in hand. I basked, a sunflower twisting to the warmth of light, in your pride. It sustained, sustains, me. I’ve never felt more real, never felt the solidity of ground and the permanence of life (and legacy) as I did when you would burst, flying towards me, hands interlocking behind my neck and words of thanks spilling out. Squeezing me in a mix of relief, joy and disbelief.

So when I was fifteen (and you seventeen), and we made the completely, utterly and totally voluntary decision to be confirmed, I chose the name Anthony.

But it wasn’t an unending, undying, unknowing belief in God that I swore to that day. It was a belief in you.

Even when the merciless stampede of time twisted us in different directions, different waves, you were always my anchor. Though my efforts may have been thin and fleeting, you knew one call about a set of missing keys or a lost lip balm would have me back through the door. For a moment it would be like I never left.

Now I wish I hadn’t.

***

As it turns out, your ‘disappearance’ is all it took to turn my sacred blessing into a horrifying curse. As days, weeks and months congeal, sluggishly dragging by like a yawn you just cant shake, I find that no matter where I cast my eyes - you’re scattered everywhere. A loose bobby pin, tangled wire of earphones. I blink, and your forgotten treasures surround me, flooding through my nose and mouth, choking me within. I wish I could lose you, know how to toss you aside under a pile of forgotten nonsense, come back to you when I remembered. Instead I find myself tumbling over you at every turn, barred in captivity and torture by your desperate eyes and wicked smile.

I skip meals, I skip sleep, I skip shifts (how can I care for anyone else now?). Anything that isn’t you, and us, fades, like watercolour, behind. I lose track of time trying to track the time I lose thinking of you. Memories running reels in my head, like one of our late night movie marathons, but even I can’t find the remote to turn it off.

You told me I should be a detective. Once. It was in the lucid gap that stretched itself out between our overgrown adolescence and uncertain adulthood. I couldn’t believe it.

Me? You’re joking.

Anthony, you’re a human bloodhound. You’d be the greatest of all time.

I realise now, that the gap between us never felt as large as it did then. I can still hold the sharp plunge of the stomach in my mind that hit when it clicked that you didn’t understand. You, perhaps, couldn’t understand what I loved so dearly about the finding. It was never for the sake of the puzzle, the dissatisfaction at the mystery. I couldn’t care less for the stimulation or game. I cared about the way people bloomed from the inside out when you take something, a piece of them, that they forgot to care for, water, and hand it back to them. To give them their own self back.

The way a man, mid thirties, fumbles, salt scented from the sea (and tears), through the sand - murmuring about a ring and perfection and her. The way his eyes fill and his mouth stammers as I feel cool metal brush against my calloused skin, entombed in the cold dampness of sand. The way he clutches me in thanks, kneeling in a grateful proposal.

The way a woman, late twenties, hair blown and fuzzed, rocks a screaming infant while her head jerks around, vital, crucial, painfully material comforts nowhere to be found. The way the sudden peace of silence speaks in volumes of gratitude that words never could, as a stained and squashed zoo animal is returned to its rightful owner.

There is a God!

And I, an everyday messiah.

It was in that moment that I learnt to take that feeling, and to make it my life’s reason.

Indeed, years later, when my growing pains subsided, and I settled into the profession I had spent years training for, I can see my memory of you bursting through my door, wine in one hand - cake in the other. I remember the loud thump, and subsequent wince, as you pushed them to the nearest surface, stretching and straining to throw your arm around me.

My Anthony, Saint of lost things, and now, souls.

I liked that. A spiritual shepherd - finding people in the way only I ever could. But science, medicine, brains and bottles don’t matter anymore. Not when you aren’t here.

You need to stop.

She’s not coming back.

Please, move on.

It doesn’t make sense. This mystery I can’t solve. How do they expect me to forget you, let you be gone? They underestimate me. You were the only one who knew never to do that.

***

I care not to think how much time has passed when I come home after a long shift, scrubs stained and trainers worn, and see you. In my mind you’re there, long limbed and buzzing, back from the days where the world felt so tall, and long, and unexplored.

You can do anything, you’d say.

Scientist, author, doctor, wizard. You’re one of a kind, Saint Anthony.

It’s a sign, so I search.

You’re elusive at first. My excitement - too great. I snap completely at a soft creak, an echoing laugh, spinning with my hands outstretched, only to find grief as my only companion.

But slowly, I begin to feel you, hidden in the cracks and creases of my view.

In the woman with the smile that paints the back of my eyelids. A swoop of arms and I take it, my first little piece of you.

In the man, twirling his pen in his long, winding fingers, at the same dizzying pace you did. I thank him, hand outstretched - and keep going.

I find your stance, seemingly careless yet achingly considered, on the train. The swirling mass of hair in the supermarket. I steal these little pieces of you, cut and placed, smuggled home. I hold them close, gathered together as if I’m you, rocking me to sleep after terror.

My collection grows, spilling out the draws and cabinets, taking up space on desks and benches, in beds and minds. Your long limbs reaching, tracing me as I walk away each morning.

I’ll come back.

I’ll find you.

I swear.

I walk for years, feet bloodied and eyes hung. I ignore the symphony of broken hearts and cacophony of crying babies, just searching, for something, for someone.

For a while, the world transforms to a desolate waste. Dust littering the surface of every hope and ambition, but then, I find them.

Your eyes.

The final piece glittering in front of me, iridescent, kaleidoscopic, strikingly you.

My hands shake as I extract them, the last segment of my mission. I run home, to you, my feet aching, failing to move as I need them to, my eyes streaming, from the strain of wind, my lungs, aching from neglect. I reach the handle, pushing with new-found strength, tripping through the entry, scattering pieces of treasures all over the dusted floor.

Needle and thread.

You taught me this, untamed hair catching my sore eyes as you bent over me, fingers weaving up and down, up and down over the loose button and frayed fabric of my Sunday best.

There, you’d say, thread pulled taught over teeth, posture correcting, hair clearing. Good as new.

Handy skill. I’d reply

I’m your mirror now, weaving, pulling, tying (trying). Bringing my pieces of you together, so close I can feel the soft touch of your hand holding my back, the warmth of your sun after so long denied and malnourished, the rough texture of your laugh.

I snap the final thread. Stumbling back, my treasure complete.

***

I stay by the bedside from then on, nights spent teaching the Scripture of your life and the Bible of your love. I learn to pray to it, to you, as I hold the cold palms of hands and coax you back. It’s so painfully slow and careful, muscles straining in reminiscence of old fingertips stretching under beds and sofas and cabinets - brushing the cool plastic of a forgotten toy. I don’t push, and never pull. I guide you - shepherd of a lost soul.

After eons, I feel the blinding ecstasy as light begins to enter, as clouds begin to clear. I watch the tapestry of your face begin to knit itself in recognition, twist a wicked smile on its lips.

I watch as limbs gain life, and seams fuse flesh. Hair embedding, eyes adjusting.

The hoarse wave of laughter like thunder cracking. Delighted whispers like morning mist. I stand, mission complete, a figure lopsided in the door of the room, gazing.

I love you, I say.

And you say it back.