Stuck in Neutral

by Terry Trueman

  It’s Friday afternoon. Yesterday Paul got on a bus with his teammates and drove three hundred miles to Spokane to play in a basketball tournament this weekend. He was really excited. Tomorrow morning, Saturday, Mom will go to Spokane too, driving Cindy and a couple of her girl friends over to watch the mighty Spartans take on the Fighting Knights of Spokane’s Thompson High School. I’m having trouble getting caught up in the rah-rah spirit. Dad’s Alice Ponds appearance has me pretty freaked out. Negativity. I’ve almost always been able to avoid it. Right now I’m floating in an ocean of it.

  I try not to think about dying, but it keeps coming back into my mind. I bet condemned guys on death row feel like this, terrible, hopeless. My stomach is empty, my chest struggles to catch a breath, my thoughts are racing. I don’t want to feel sorry for myself. Negativity and self-pity are useless. Mostly, all my life, I’ve relied on humor and remembering good stuff to get me through each day. To me laughter and memory have always been the best things to fight off worry. And after all, when you’re talking memories, I am the king.

  Right now I can’t shut my memories down. My life races through my brain, and I remember everything. I can’t even slow my brain down. I remember Christmas morning when I was six years old. I woke up to the sounds of Paul and Cindy in the living room. It might have been the last Christmas all three of us were still pretty much little kids. Lying in my crib, I could hear Cindy and Paul laughing. I’d hear the slightest ripppp and the rustling of wrapping paper, then ooh and ahhh in loud, excited whispers. Then I’d hear them tear a piece of Scotch tape from the little plastic dispenser. They were sneaking peeks at all their gifts, then taping the presents shut again. December that year was fairly warm. I remember lying there in my crib and a robin, very fat, came and landed on the sill outside my window. I saw him through a small crack between the curtains. He was parked right in the middle of the opening, staring in at me. He seemed to know what was going on, like he was a member of the Christmas morning bird police. He seemed to be asking me whether or not we should bust Cindy and Paul. I knew it couldn’t be true, but it felt true. I thought to the robin, Let’s just let ’em go this time, and the robin winked at me, then flew away. I remember!

  I remember when I was eight, Dad and Mom took the three of us kids to the Seattle Center, to the Pacific Science Center. Cindy and Paul had been begging to go to the virtual reality attraction. If you waited in line for forty minutes, you could put on headgear, step into this twirly machine, and fly through the cosmos. After Cindy and Paul had each had their turns, I figured we’d leave, but Dad said, “Shawn’s turn.”

  The guy running the ride looked at me in my wheelchair and said, “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t know how we’d put a wheelchair in this.”

  Dad gave the guy one of his best Sydney E. McDaniel, Madman Poet, stares; this was in the pre-Pulitzer era, and Dad looked a lot more “mad” back then. Dad said, “I wasn’t interested in taking the wheelchair for a ride.” He lifted me out like I weighed one ounce, and demanded, “Strap me in. I’ll hold him.”

  The guy running the show was tall and thin, wearing a green Science Center polo shirt. “I don’t know.”

  “Come on, buddy,” my dad said, like the guy’d been his best friend for twenty years. “You know the drill: no guts, no glory. This kid and I are one turn, look.” Dad walked over to the machine, and before the guy could say another word, Dad, talking nonstop, stepped into the harness, holding me all the while, never giving the attendant a chance to say “no” again.

  “This’ll be great,” Dad said. “Nobody wants a lawsuit over failure to serve the handicapped; everybody is happy; everybody wants to have fun. This is great. We’re havin’ some fun now. Great, great. Now I’ll just strap in, and we’ll put that headgear jobby right on old Shawn’s noggin here, and we’re all set.”

  By the time the guy could get a word out, Dad and I were already strapped into the contraption. Dad reached out, grabbed the headgear from the guy, and put it on me.

  In the next moment I whirled through time and space, stars shot past me, and the galaxy unfolded: light, darkness, speed. Fantastic! The best part of all, though: I loved the feeling of my dad’s arms around me, holding me tightly as we spun and twisted our way through the universe. I remember.

  I remember all my reactions to all the music I’ve ever heard: songs, melodies, and symphonies. I remember images too: van Gogh’s Crows in a Corn Field, Hopper’s Nighthawks, Picasso’s Guernica, and Mary Randlett’s photographs of water caressing stones. I remember the faces, voices, hands, and hearts of artists and poets, actors and ditch diggers, cops and grocers, the guy who reads our electric meter.

  I remember Ken Burns’s Baseball, Mom’s Charlie perfume, Cindy’s laughter and her smile, the blood that time on Paul’s hands, and all the times I heard his laugh and the thump of his feet as he ran up the stairs, the ring of the telephone, the snap of a drum, the morning paper hitting the porch. I remember: Ally’s pretty face, William’s strong arms, Becky’s soft smile, “winky, winky, winky.” My life moves across the back of my eyes, across the middle of my ears, and everything I’ve ever dreamed, seen, smelled, heard, desired, loved, hated, been scared of, wished I could touch—I remember all of it.

  Memory is all we have, for ourselves and for the people we love. The memories of us, once we die, are all that’s left of us. When I’m gone, maybe someone will pick up my dad’s poem “Shawn”; maybe it will be a year after I’m dead, maybe two years, maybe two hundred years. Maybe that person will read the poem and be moved and think they know me. Whom will they know? What will they know? Will that edition carry a special note explaining that Sydney E. McDaniel, the author of the poem, killed his son? Will the reader know Dad or me any better? If I’m anything at all, you’d have to agree that I am memory. Will anyone ever know that my life, once lived and then over, was one of perfect remembering? No one will know. No one will know me. I’m just not ready to give up the hope that someday I might be known. I’m not ready.

  14

  In sleep, voice quiet, he breathes,

  hands still, in silence, slumbering.

  His spirit is a feather on a quiet river....

  It’s about ten o’clock at night. I’m tired. Remembering all your lifetime of memories and thinking about being dead all day long is hard work. I fall asleep right away. I begin to dream.

  In my dream I’m at my dad’s place, his little green house surrounded and overgrown by trees that hide it from the street. It’s just a simple little two-story home, two bedrooms, one bathroom. It has a deck in front, built around a huge old cherry tree.

  Suddenly I’m in Dad’s bedroom, next to him as he sleeps. I’ve visited this room many times during my seizure travels: I can see, on the wall, through the darkness, framed photographs of me, Cindy, Paul, the three of us together and apart; there’s one picture taken when all three of us were just little kids and Dad had hair and Mom looked like a kid herself.

  In one corner of the room, just below a tall window that looks out toward the street, is a writing table; Dad’s computer sits on it. His screensaver pattern is dots of light rushing toward us—they look like stars falling off the sides and top and bottom before they fly off the screen. I slip back into the darkest corner of the room, next to the closet door, and wedge myself into the blackness.

  Finally I gather my courage, approach Dad’s bed, and whisper gently, “Dad.” He doesn’t respond.

  “Hey, come here,” I command, so sharply that I even scare myself. In that instant Dad looks up at me.

  He stares into my eyes, confusion playing across his face—he seems to be trying to place me.

  “I don’t know you,” he says. “Are you an angel?”

  “No,” I answer, a little shocked that we are actually talking.

  “Dad, it’s me,” I say, realizing that these are the first words he’s ever heard me speak.

  “Oh my baby,” Dad whispers, and begins to weep. “Oh baby boy, you’re gone. Oh God,
I’m so sorry you’re gone.”

  “Dad, it’s okay. I’m okay.”

  “Oh God, Shawn, you’re gone.”

  I interrupt, speaking firmly, “Dad, I’m right here, I love you, I need you to know—”

  Ignoring me, Dad interrupts. “I’m so sorry I lost you, baby, I’m so sorry I had to let you go. You were my baby, my baby boy, and I said good-bye, I left you and I lost you.” Dad sobs.

  “Dad, it’s all right,” I insist, trying to interrupt; I want to comfort him.

  Dad says, “You’re gone, you became an angel because I let you go. Double-jointed thumbs, just you and me. I had to let go....” His tears choke off the rest of his words.

  I begin to cry too. “Dad, Daddy … I … I can’t.” I’m crying too hard to speak.

  “I’m so sorry, baby boy,” Dad says, his voice trembling, slicing into me like a scalpel carving an aching loss.

  “You’re an angel, baby boy. The angels came and loved you away because I let you go.

  “Good-bye, son,” he says softly. “Good-bye, baby boy. Go be an angel.”

  “I love you, Dad,” I say, and in the instant before the dream ends, I add desperately, “I don’t want to die!”

  15

  Inside me this moment changes

  into something never felt before;

  a flutter of feathers as two birds, falling,

  pass down through a blind, silent prayer,

  whispering good-bye to dreams and hope,

  pass down, falling, and whispering good-bye.

  It’s Saturday morning. Surrounded by sleeping bags, coolers, suitcases, cosmetics kits, groceries, noise, laughter, and the high-pitched chatter of female voices, Cindy, her friends, and Mom are doing the last-minute preparations for their trip to Spokane. Go, Spartans!

  After what seems like hours the van is finally packed. Mom stops to give me a kiss on the forehead as she moves toward the door. But before her lips can even pucker up, Cindy, laughing, pulls her away. And suddenly they’re gone. In a burst of energy and collective chaos, they’re out the door.

  Vonda, my respite care provider, is nice. As near as I can tell, “respite care provider” is a fancy name for baby-sitter. She’s taken care of me before. She’s a little impatient at my feeding times, and I’m sure when she has to change my diapers, she comes up with lots of better ideas for making six bucks an hour. But most of the day she watches TV, chats on the phone, and reads Good Housekeeping or Glamour, which she has brought along with her. She doesn’t give me much attention, but then nobody else does either.

  Today she’s happy. She’s working on her nails, glopping on deep-purple polish, followed by a sprinkling of gold glitter. She’s at least, league minimum, fifty pounds overweight, but her nails and her hair are perfect. I like her. Later tonight she’ll feed me, then give me my meds. She’ll put me in my pajamas, making sure I’m dry and clean; then she’ll put me to bed.

  The day goes by so fast. Each hour seems like a minute. Whenever I manage to focus on the digital clock on the microwave in the kitchen, I’m shocked by how much time has passed.

  It’s already early afternoon by the time I have my first seizure.

  Outside of my body I decide to take a little tour of Seattle: Pike Place Market, the Seattle Art Museum, Pioneer Square, the waterfront with its cheesy piers and stench of fishy salt water.

  I take this seizure slowly. I consider soaring down I-90 to see if I can spot Mom’s van. But in my spirit I don’t feel like flying or soaring or zipping across time and space. I feel relaxed, content. I float aimlessly; I am at peace. I think about all the things I remember, I think about all the things I’ve heard, and I wonder if …

  I’m back in my body again. One second I was in Elliot Bay Bookstore, floating my way between the pages of some favorite old picture books, and the next I am in my bed. It’s dark out already. I must have slept for hours.

  I hear a car pull up. One door opens, then slams shut. I hear footsteps approaching the house. There is a knock on the front door, but then someone walks on in.

  “Hello,” I hear Dad call.

  “Hi,” Vonda calls back.

  “It’s Shawn’s father.”

  “All right,” Vonda answers. I hear an edge of excitement in her tone.

  They exchange pleasantries in the entryway: Dad comments on her nails, she thanks him, a giggly blush to her voice.

  Dad asks, “How was Shawn’s day?”

  “Oh, just fine,” Vonda answers. “It’s so exciting to meet you. I read your poem, about Shawn … I mean, of course, the one about Shawn … I mean … it was so wonderful … I’m so honored. I always hoped I’d meet you.”

  She sounds literally breathless, but she manages to go on. “I even have your book with me—I mean in my purse. I always bring it in the hope that I might … I mean that you might … what I mean is, would you autograph it for me?”

  I can hear the smile in Dad’s voice as he answers, “Sure.”

  I hear a brief rummaging, as Vonda digs into her purse. Then I hear Dad speak. His voice has a slightly distracted sound to it. “I was thinking,” Dad says casually, “that I’d like to stay over tonight with Shawn. You’ve already fed him and put him to bed, right?”

  “Oh yes,” Vonda answers. “Will you write ‘To Vonda Quarantos,’ then something kind of personal?” She giggles, embarrassed.

  “Of course,” Dad says, then, while inscribing her book, in the same casual, off-the-cuff tone, he adds, “I was just thinking, there’s no sense in your being trapped here all night. I’ll stay with Shawn.”

  “Are you sure?” Vonda asks.

  “Absolutely. You’ll still get paid for the hours, of course, but I’m not doing anything else tonight, and I’m happy to help out.”

  “Gosh,” Vonda says. “That’d be great.”

  Dad says, “It’s a done deal.”

  I realize that in all my years of being alive, my dad has never before stayed with me all by himself overnight. Yet suddenly he’s volunteered to take care of me.

  A done deal, huh? Am I the done deal?

  16

  We sat in that silent darkness,

  I felt my baby dreaming.

  His breath was Lindy and me saying good-bye.

  His breath was my grandfather’s breathing,

  his breath was my father loving us,

  his breath was my breath, we breathed as one.

  I hear Dad come into the room. I wait calmly. There’s nothing else I can do. I’m not afraid. My breathing is easy. I feel steady, relaxed, and alert. Whatever my dad has decided, whatever he decides—I can’t know whether it’s right or wrong, because I don’t really know what is for the best; maybe death is nothing like I saw that day when that dog died. Maybe death is simply flying free forever. I just don’t know.

  “Hey, buddy,” Dad says. He comes to my bed, lowers the side, and sits next to me. He’s quiet. He, reaches down to the foot of my bed in the corner where a quilted pillow lies. He grabs the pillow and sets it in his lap. My eyes happen to focus on the pillow. Mom made the quilted cover years ago, maybe even before Dad left us. There’s a pattern of checkered blocks, light blue and off-white, and a thin band of dark burgundy along the edge. That dark-reddish band of color reminds me of the way blood looks in black-and-white movies. I’m remembering a part of Dad’s poem, the night he almost ended it all. I remember Earl Detraux’s description of killing his son.

  Dad says, his eyes sad, “I hope you know I love you. I’ve always loved you.” He pauses, careful in his words. I can tell he’s rehearsed some of this. He shifts the pillow nervously in his lap, his hands kneading the cushion. He reaches over, takes my hands. “Double-jointed,” he says, setting them on the pillow on his lap. He gently bends my thumbs into right angles, bends his own too. “Just you and me.”

  I think the words “I love you too, Dad,” trying to will them into his mind.

  Dad breathes slowly, staring at our hands. He’s trying to maintain control
, fighting back his tears and looking at me. “Shawn, I’ve always loved you,” he repeats, his voice soft and trembling. The weight of his words and thoughts seems to tug on him like a necklace of concrete blocks. He squeezes the pillow hard, blood draining from his knuckles. “I know I say ‘I love you’ too easily, and that the words collapse in meaning when they’re said too many times. But no one will ever know what I mean by ‘love’ as I say it to you, unless that person has gone through what we have, unless he’s going through it right now.” Dad breaks down. Through soft sobs he struggles to get the words out. I hear his words. “Never does a day go by when I don’t think about you. Never does an hour pass when I don’t wonder how you are, how you’re feeling. The word ‘love’ doesn’t touch what I feel about you, for you.” He pauses, regaining his composure.

  I will the words “I love you too” over and over.

  My eyes happen to shift to his face; I watch his expression as he talks. I’ve never noticed before how much older he’s getting. His skin is smooth and he’s still handsome, but he looks almost frail. His eyes look like they’ve seen too much sadness; the creases around them are deep.

  He says, “When I think about you, Shawn, my heart breaks at one moment and is at peace the next. When I think about you hurting, I can barely even breathe, my chest aches so badly. I sometimes pray, Just let this all be over.” He seems suddenly stronger again, almost angry as he adds, “When you were born, and we were told that you’d have these kinds of problems, do you know I got down on my knees and prayed harder than I’d ever prayed, begging God or Satan, or anybody in between, to let me trade places with you? I prayed, night after night, that I could be the one trapped inside your body and that you could take my place. I prayed so hard, for weeks, months, that I almost started believing in God.” He laughs at his irony. “I guess we know how that worked out.” His voice turns hard. “I could never find words strong enough to express the hate I felt toward God when those prayers went unanswered. It took years for me to sign in on that armistice. God was patient.” He sighs.