American Purgatorio

by John Haskell

  Later, in a pair of borrowed pajamas, I sit on the edge of my bed, looking at the furniture: a dresser, a window, a lamp on a bedside table. The walls are white. A carved wooden bird hangs on a wall. I sit for a long time, forgetting that I’m sitting, and forgetting my breath, which is heavy and bumpy. My heart is beating as if catching up with something. There’s an alarm clock beside the bed with bright green numbers that change into different numbers.

  After a while I realize I’ve been sitting on the bed a long time. Like waking up, whatever I’d been doing on the bed before is gone, like an unremembered dream. If I was thinking, I don’t remember what. And if I wasn’t thinking, what was I doing? Whatever it was has faded away, and in waking, I come back to the world, worried that if I let myself go, I’ll be gone entirely.

  Days go by, or seem to, one day turning into another, and after a while—no one says anything—I seem to be living with them. Moving around the house, from kitchen to bedroom to bathroom, as we pass each other, I can feel my inconsequentiality. I’m not an obstacle to anything, but neither am I affecting the world in which they move. More and more I take long walks along the beach, or north of the beach, where the rocks start.

  On certain nights Linda goes away to a class, and on one of those nights I find myself sitting on the sofa looking through an album of photographs, of Geoff and Linda on various vacations, and one of the photographs, with a lagoon in the background, freezes me. The two of them are standing in a jungle, looking at the camera, and you can actually see the happiness playing on their faces. I tell Geoff, who’s reading a magazine, that it’s a beautiful picture, thinking the expression of happiness, which lingers with me even when I look away, is something beautiful. I realize they’ve known each other for years, that their bond is strong. “Could I have a copy of this?” I ask him.

  As I stare down at their faces full of happiness, full of transient joy, I see in the photograph, not only the happiness, but also the end of that happiness. As I continue staring at the fleeting moment revealed in the shiny piece of paper I can see the fleeting quality of everything, of life and the memory of life, and when I look up at Geoff, sitting in a chair in a room, it’s like looking at a photograph. Man with Crossed Legs. The room and Geoff and even my act of looking are part of a fleeting moment which is over before it begins. I close the book of photos. “Never mind,” I say. “But thanks.”

  A few days later, or hours later—I’ve lost track—I’m sitting on the same sofa. Geoff has gone to work so it must be during the day. Linda is stretching her legs on a mat near the wall in the living room. Light is coming in through the front windows and I sit, listening to her breathing, watching her on the blue mat in an exercise outfit, which, I imagine, wicks moisture away from her body.

  I’m also looking at the rug on the floor and the shelves with boxes of music on the wall, and I’m pretty sure I’m sitting in a chair in a house in a city watching a person saluting an imaginary sun, moving her body into a variety of shapes. But because I’m not completely sure, and want some surety, I say something to Linda about something, it doesn’t matter what because what I want is her attention. I want her to corroborate the world that seems to be the one I’m in. Because she’s concentrating on something else, something other than the world we share, I stand up and walk to the closet. I find a vacuum cleaner and snap on a carpet attachment. I plug the cord into the wall and begin vacuuming the rug in the room where she’s practicing.

  I want to be in her thoughts, to exist in those thoughts, and so, although the rug is not that big, I keep vacuuming. She says something about not being able to concentrate, but I continue vacuuming. At which point she stands up and I think she has the intention of telling me to stop. But then she changes her mind. Some people are blessed with sympathy, and so she goes into the kitchen, finds a bucket of rags, grabs a handful, moistens them in the white sink and then hands me a rag and begins dusting. The windowsills and along the stereo shelves. I get on my hands and knees, and there’s nothing like activity to distract the mind, and thank god for distraction I think as I start scrubbing the floor and the baseboards, trying to get every last bit of dust and sand and hair. We’re both doing it, working together, and the room is not boundless so we finish and move to the bedroom. There’s a lot of dust there. I take the vacuum and she wipes down the woodwork. We make the bed, put away the dirty clothes, and we finish that room. Then the bathroom. The toilet needs scrubbing and the floor needs mopping and that’s what we do. She polishes the mirror and the sink and I’m standing in the tub, using cleanser and sponge, cleaning the tiles and the area between the tiles, scrubbing off the mildew stuck to the porous grout. We work in a kind of unison, and it’s hard to tell who’s cleaning what, our various hands becoming a single pair of hands, scrubbing and rinsing and squeezing the sponge.

  And then she steps into the tub. She kneels down and begins scrubbing the same tiles I’ve just polished, and I tell her, “I’ve already cleaned those tiles,” but she keeps working, scraping away the discoloration. And that’s when I realize that I haven’t cleaned anything. I thought I was cleaning, and wanted to be cleaning, but I was just standing there the whole time, slightly off to the side, watching her. I thought I was holding a sponge, but when I look at my hand nothing’s there. I thought I was making some progress. I thought I was feeling connected to the world but instead of connected, I’m disconnected. And in the middle of that disconnection I seem hardly to exist.

  I step out of the tub and follow Linda back to the kitchen. She puts the cleaning supplies under the sink. She goes to her rubber mat and begins where she left off with her yoga. She kneels down and then she stands on her head.

  I watch her for a minute and I remember, from Alex, in Kentucky, one pose; it’s the only pose I know but it’s my favorite pose. I lie on my back, next to her, my legs stretched out and relaxed, my arms on the rug away from my hips, my eyes closed, my mind empty.

  Not empty, but confined to my body, which is sinking into the floor. My eyes are relaxed. My mind is relaxed.

  And then I stand up. Slowly. I roll over, then stand up, vertebra by vertebra, as much as I can. Once I’m up I notice that my senses seem to be functioning better. I can see with a little more acuity. I notice a dictionary on the stereo bookshelf. Two dictionaries, a paperback version next to a red hardcover. I pick up the frayed brown paperback, thumbing through, looking at the words and the black-and-white drawings beside the words. I ask Linda, standing on her head against the wall, if I can borrow the book.

  She says nothing.

  “I mean can I have it?”

  I interpret her silence to mean I should take it.

  I’m standing next to her, and I want to thank her, but because she’s upside down, I’m standing next to her legs floating in the air. So I reach over—her ankles are showing—I reach over and I kiss her, lightly, on the skin of her ankle. And then I go to my room.

  I sit on the bed.

  My body is there. I can still feel my body, my butt bones on the mattress. I can feel my feet on the rug. I can feel the book in my hands, my fingers holding the weight of the book. I don’t want to fade away. Fading away is frightening. I have things to do before I fade away.

  So I stand up. I put on one of Geoff’s dark blue sports coats, and in my borrowed clothes I leave the house. They live a few blocks from the water and I walk to the edge of the water, holding the dictionary against my wrist. When I watch the waves, although there are surfers riding the waves, all I can see is the water. The boardwalk, at that point along the coast, is just a sidewalk with cyclists and walkers and people on skates. I walk along with them, south toward the lifeguard tower, and keep walking, down past the coffee stand and along the sandy cement, the girls in bathing suits and boys in shorts. Surprisingly, I’m not in a hurry.

  When I get to the Surfer Hotel I find the door to Polino’s shack, the air-conditioning room where Polino and I used to sleep, and of course the door is locked. I find a thin piece of alumi
num siding at the construction site next door and fit it between the door and the jamb and with a little jiggling I’m able to slip back the bolt on the door. I walk inside where it’s cool, into the cinder-block hum of machinery. I go to the place behind the heater and find the box with the candle and the rolled-up blankets. I place the dictionary on the ground in front of the box, next to a valve with a tag hanging from the metal thread. I leave the book. No note, just the book.

  4.

  I’m standing on a sidewalk at the side of a large supermarket. Cars are coming out of an underground parking garage. The world, as I notice it around me, has a clarity. Everything is clear, but also slightly removed. The outlines are sharp but the things themselves—the palm tree growing in the grass, the oil stains in the street, the sound of a motorcycle—all the things in the world are separate from me. Separate, and also the same. There’s a certain pleasure in standing there, seeing the world in front of me, and not constantly wanting something from it all the time.

  I would almost call it tranquillity, this lack of desire. Everything is just moving or not moving according to some plan, and because it’s not my plan, and because I have no vested interest in the outcome, it seems perfect. And I want it to last. I want to keep feeling the perfection around me, and in me, but it can’t go on forever, I think. Not like this.

  So I stand there, and whatever it is, I feel it. I don’t try to feel it, I just let it happen, and when I do, yes, the peace is there. The tranquillity is there, but I don’t know. Is the peace of it all being over better than being in the world?

  Wanting life is life, and I’m not quite ready to give it up. I don’t want to be dead. I can adjust to anything, anything except not being. I still want to see what’s going to happen. Maybe I’m greedy, but my habit is to hold on, so that’s what I do.

  And that’s when the tranquillity starts to fade. I liked that tranquillity, but now it’s replaced by the opposite of tranquillity, desire, a desire for the world. Without the world, and the tumult of the world, there’s nothing. Not nothingness. Just nothing. Without the world penetrating my senses, without that stimulation, there’s only numbness. And although that numbness has a tranquillity component, it also has a black hole component. Which is why, as usual, I start walking.

  I don’t know what else to do. In an effort to keep from losing the world I wander along Mission Boulevard, along the narrow sidewalk, past the small pastel houses crowded together. I walk for what seems like a long time, until I come to the parking lot of the Mission Beach amusement park. I thought I was wandering aimlessly but maybe I had in my mind all along the idea of riding the roller coaster, because that’s where I go.

  Geoff had given me some spending money and so in the middle of the stalls and rides I find the ticket booth, buy a small red ticket, and wait in a line. As I’m standing there I notice a man who looks like my father, and who may well be my father, smoking a cigarette against a chain-link fence. Because my father is dead I watch this man as he takes a last puff, throws the butt on the ground, and walks away.

  The line moves forward and a man in a sweatshirt tells a teenager in front of me to step into one of the cars. I step into an empty car behind him, and a metal bar is lowered over my chest. I’m sitting in the seat, and my car, part of a train of cars, starts moving. It’s being pulled, slowly and deliberately, up the ramp, up to the highest point. I can hear the old metal wheels grating on the track. Then the silence of anticipation.

  And then the car starts its plummet, and the rest of the ride is filled with the screams of excitement. But not my screams. During the ride, instead of excitement, I feel nostalgia. For life. This is life. You can’t get much more adrenaline in life than this. And although the ride doesn’t take much time, at the end of it I’m crying, not over the absence of that life, but over its existence.

  5.

  It’s the middle of the day and people are out, walking in the sun. I’m walking with them, watching them as they go about building their lives. I remember back to who I was with Anne, who I wanted to be with Anne, trying to build my life—and our life together—thinking I was building it, happy that I was there in the world, with her, although at the time I wasn’t thinking about it, I was just doing it. It was my dream, and these people, I think, are also dreaming. Not lost in a dream, but dreaming of what can happen, dreaming of what life will mean, of who they want to be. Everyone wants to be something. I wanted to be something, but now I’ve forgotten what it was I wanted to be. I know it was something, something good, something that would make the world better, something that would make Anne happy.

  Or maybe only I wanted to be happy? I’m not so sure. I’m not so sure my attraction to happiness included anyone other than me. I’m not convinced I wasn’t alone the whole time Anne and I were together.

  In New Jersey we were together. I know that. At the gas station. We’d been driving together, talking together, crossing the bridge together. Dreaming even. We had dreams: of children, of success, of friends, the garden, old age. Not too much about old age. We weren’t there yet, but it was part of the dream, part of the implied dream we were dreaming together.

  And now the dream is over. I didn’t want it to be over before but now I remember what happened at the gas station. I was in the convenience store picking out candy bars and snack food, not just for me, but for her. I knew her, knew what she liked, and it was simple to choose those things that she liked. Which I did. I paid the woman at the counter and walked outside, into the cool air, into the daylight, and there she was, she’d thought of me, she’d pulled up near the entrance so I wouldn’t have to walk so far. That was nice. I opened the car door. I bent down and leaned in, put my hand on the seat. Look what I got, I started to say. I did say it, “Look what I got.” And then I heard the sound, of the car. It wasn’t making any noise but I knew it was there, moving. I heard it. I knew something was there and I was about to stand up.

  I saw what was about to happen.

  And then it happened.

  I think there ought to be more to the memory, but there isn’t. I think there ought to be the recollection of every detail, every imperceptible detail of metal bending and bodies bending against the metal. Soft, pliable, broken bodies. There ought to be memories of lying on the ground, looking up at the sky growing darker and darker. There ought to be a life passing before my eyes, but it happened too quickly.

  And then it was over.

  6.

  So this must be what it is to be dead, I think. To be dead and yet still holding on. In a way, I’m relieved. I’ve been fading away all this time, and now at least there’s a reason.

  As I walk up the street I look around, thinking that everything ought to be different, that the world would look and act and be a different thing. But the light poles are still light poles, and the dead grass is just what it is.

  Coming home I find a note tacked to the door. It’s a note with directions to a beach. I see the handwritten words on the paper and I’m surprised I can even make meaning from them. In a way they’re just scribbles, just black lines and dots on a piece of paper. I fold the piece of paper, put it in my pocket, and then I go into the house.

  I like the house, especially when it’s empty. The windows are open. And it’s clean. I remember trying to clean it. I remember everything, everything except the bird cage in the corner of the room. I step up to the metal cage and look inside. Where did this bird come from? Seeds and droppings are covering a newspaper at the bottom of the cage and I check to see if the bird has food. I touch the cage, and it’s not an illusion. It’s a canary. “Hi, Birdie,” I say. I don’t know the name of the bird so I call it Birdie. It’s yellow and green, and when the bird starts singing I wonder, Why did I never notice this bird before? Like an imaginary world, which is now my world. And I don’t mind. I sing along with the bird as best I can. If it is an imaginary world, at least, for a moment, it can be enjoyable.

  I walk out of the house and down to the beach. I would say the
walk to the beach is quiet, but it’s not the sounds that are quiet. I feel light in my shoes. I find the spot where the note said they would be. And there they are, the two of them, together with other people, gathered around a fire. It’s late afternoon. The sun is going down behind some clouds on the water.

  I join the group and warm my hands at the fire. When I look at the fire, sometimes it seems to be a raging blaze and sometimes just the glowing of some embers. I don’t know exactly which is the real fire, the embers or the blaze, but since I prefer the idea of a raging blaze that’s what I see.

  Linda is standing next to me. When she puts another log on I think, That’s not a good idea. The fire is almost out of control as it is and it doesn’t need another log. I try to tell her it doesn’t need anything, but she doesn’t hear me. She takes another log from the pile and sets it on what’s already burning. I watch the embers crackle and spark, and I can see how the fire can change depending on how I look at it, that anything can change, depending on the attitude behind my eyes, and since now, in my mind, I’m making a roaring bonfire, I take a step back. I look at the rest of the people. They’re wearing shorts and T-shirts, standing around the fire pit, focusing on the fire. Caught in the light of the fire they look animated, and although they don’t know it, I am with these people, and it’s nice to be with people.

  Since they’ve brought marshmallows and coat hangers I find a coat hanger, straighten it out, and attach a marshmallow to the end of it. I dangle it over the fire. I may be dead, but I’m still going to roast a marshmallow. I hold it close to what I assume is the glowing heat. I’m bending over the fire pit when Linda walks over to me. I watch her hand reach out and gently take the coat hanger from my hand. As if my hand wasn’t even there. That’s how I see it. The coat hanger slips easily into her fingers.