High as the Horses' Bridles: A Novel

by Scott Cheshire

  He was considering something, looking up to the ceiling, biting his lip. His shirt was wrinkled and situated oddly on his torso. His stomach peeked from under the hem, the skin shiny and stretched. And yet I swear he’d lost even more weight in the last two hours. He started forward. And he wavered there for a moment. What little color he had was draining from his face.

  Then he fell over, catching himself on the counter.

  “Hey. Whoa. Come here.” I took him by an arm.

  “I’m fine!”

  I lifted him anyway, and brought him to a chair. I looked at him and wondered what my own kid would have looked like: part me, part Sarah, and, somewhere in the mix, partly this skinny old man.…

  “Ankle’s just tricky, I’m fine.”

  “You’re not fine.” I jogged to the living room, thinking now I would not take no for an answer. This was too urgent, and I would call for a doctor. On the floor beside a sofa leg, a cat was sniffing at my phone. I kicked at the cat and she cried out.

  “Get in here,” he called out. “Just follow me.”

  I found him pulling himself along the hallway. “You’re like your mother. So protective, and when you get grumpy, everybody watch out.” He was clutching the bathroom doorknob now. The red light was leaking from under.

  He said, “You like eggs?”

  How do you answer a question like this?

  He pointed at my mouth, at something on my face. “You like butter, that’s obvious, but do you like eggs?”

  He opened the bathroom door.

  It was dark inside, except for the plump red night-light plugged in above the sink. He nodded, prompting me to enter. It was very much like a darkroom. Negatives should’ve been dangling from clothespins affixed to the shower rod. And I have to say the red glow became spookily attractive pretty fast. The bathtub was full of water, clean and clear red water. A short cot, raised not six inches from the floor, was next to the tub. A thin mattress. A pillow. A black spiral notebook. He followed me into the red room and closed the door. I couldn’t help but think of horror movies: I would now be bludgeoned. My father standing in the dark Martian light was shorter than I thought he should be. He was delicate and looked so fragile. I wanted to lift him and lay him on the cot. I wanted to pat his head with a wet cloth and read the man to sleep.

  He perched himself on the side of the tub and said, “My head is the egg in here. I keep it warm and wait for dreams.”

  “You have dreams.”

  “I have dreams. And then I go looking for your mother.”

  He put out his hand, I took it, and he pulled himself to a standing position. I wondered how much trouble he’d had before, having to lift himself, all by himself, from the cot. He opened the door and went back in the hallway. I stayed there for a moment, surrounded by the red walls of another man’s insides, his stomach, his heart and lungs. I was foreign matter in my father’s blood and I almost knew every secret, just this side of the blood–brain barrier. Somewhere just beyond the red walls, in who knows what other invisible place, I would find the dreaming brain of my father. I found him sitting at the dining room table.

  He was looking away to the bare wall, coughing. He wiped at his mouth. “I don’t care about church anymore. Not even the first church, first century. I wanna go back before that. I wanna go where we found God. And that’s not here, I can promise you.” He made a twirling with his fingers, and snorted.

  “You’re angry,” I said.

  “I’ve wasted too much time.”

  “You have not. Don’t say that.”

  His face shone out all white: “This is not your body. Don’t tell me what I’ve done.”

  I nodded.

  “There are rules. Lay by a body of water. And the bath works out just fine.” He shook his head like he was trying to stop himself from dozing off. “Pharaoh had dreams. Joseph read dreams. Daniel, Ezekiel, Enoch.” He pointed toward the book on the table. I remembered our family Bible studies, and those names came at me like thrown ghosts. I practically had to duck. We’d spent almost an entire year, as a family, reading the books of Daniel and Ezekiel. At one point Dad had a large sketch pad set on a wooden easel—he’d bought these from a hobby shop—propped beside the dining room table. He drew childish drawings, stick figure versions of the visions found in these books, hoping they would make it all come more alive as he taught us. The Four Horsemen on stick figure horses. A throne looking like a geriatric shower chair for the elderly, floating over a typical cartoon cloud; everyone knows how to draw a cloud. I’d never heard of the book of Enoch.

  “The first revelation,” he said. “The very first, Enoch’s dream in the apocryphal scripture. And that right there is the kernel.” He hooked his thumb in the direction of the open book on the table. “This is hundreds of years before Revelation, before St. John comes along, before his blanket on Patmos beach.”

  “You need water? I need water.” He waved, No.

  I excused myself and went to the kitchen. And I knew he meant the kernel like in corn or a seed that grows, but I also thought of Amad, and how he’d be so proud of his little Josie for remembering his lessons over the years: a kernel is also the computing center, the core of any system, the small essential thing that remains in fixed memory forever. I breathed and went back to the table.

  He took the water from my hand and he drank it.

  He said, “John lay on a beach and he fasted. Another rule. No food, not a bite. So really I’m cheating on Sundays.” He sipped again and handed back the glass. “And God gives John his revelation in a dream. But this is John’s dream, it’s not mine.”

  I drank from the water.

  “Revelation, chapter twenty-two,” he said. “Just before he’s finished. ‘If any man adds or takes away from these words then God will erase his name from the Book of Life.’ Kaput. He’s saying, Don’t put words in my mouth. And don’t go messing with my dream.” He reached for the glass again. It was empty. I made to get up for more water and he gestured for me not to. He said, “What thou seest, write it down in a book. What thou hast seen, and what things there will be thereafter. You have to write it down.”

  “Okay.”

  He was looking at his lap now. “Tertullian fasted.” He looked up at me, like it was time to finally say this, and we both knew it, so let’s just go ahead and say it. “I understand why we don’t—why you and I don’t ever talk about some things.”

  “We’re fine. You and I are fine.”

  “Why we are the way we are.” He pushed down on the table and lifted himself. He said, “Have I embarrassed you? If I do, or I ever have, just be good enough to forgive me. Would you do that for me? I think every father does this to his son.”

  I had quick flashes of remembered moments that exactly fit the expression. Of course, I’d been embarrassed by my father, but what son can say this never happened? I knew no more about how to be a son than he did about being a father, and we’d had our respective jobs for the same amount of years. We’d had these idealized visions of each other that we loved, but they weren’t us. I’d always loved Dad, but always a more palatable version of the man. This was embarrassing. I was the one who should’ve been embarrassed.

  “I feel close to you,” he said, and I saw his eyes change.

  “I should’ve been here more,” I said, “checking up on you.”

  “Oh, no, no. I give you a hard time, but look at you! I’m so proud of you making your way. Your own way. And on your own. You’re way stronger than I ever was.”

  I never expected to hear something like this from him, never. How easily we forget how love works, that we love in the only way we know how. He was right there in front of me—but then he went gone in his eyes. It was the first time I saw this, and it frightened me.

  I said, “Dad, you’re so strong, it scares me. Even when you’re wrong.” I laughed.

  The light suddenly came back alive, and he stood there steadily.

  He said: “I have walked in Heaven, and I have s
een your mother. I saw her just this morning.” His eyes were glassing over, and getting full. “I have been in the presence of the Lord because He walks in the halls of my head. He takes me up! I’ve seen everything there is, and whatever is left for me after.” He touched my face. “Suicide is a terrible sin, but this is not the taking of a life. I swear it’s not. I’m just giving it back.”

  He wiped at his eyes.

  Leaving the room, and holding his side, he said, “I’ll eat with you later, tonight, I promise. I think I’m done for today. Talk later tonight, okay? I’ll get some sleep.”

  I licked my teeth.

  “And tomorrow,” he said. “You can call your doctor. I don’t mean to scare you like this.”

  He opened the bathroom door, and then the door closed quietly.

  I decided I needed a walk, and that I could not spend the remainder of the day indoors. He’d be sleeping anyway. I needed air and light. A low and dour rumbling in my stomach. I wanted to be far from that house, and so I headed for the train, walking as if my legs alone knew the destination, but my head had no idea.

  The elevated train snaked along over the rooftops and the laundry lines strung between fire escapes, past the graffiti-covered houses and the wide-open top-floor windows, old women in pink scratchy hair curlers and soiled tank tops with their arms over sills, taking me to yet another train, and then to yet another which took me underground and way across town. I sat there looking at the photos of my mother, of a halfway anonymous O. Laudermilk mock-hitching a ride in old-time San Diego, and of Issy on grade school picture day.

  I got off the train in Astoria.

  I walked up the stairs to the sidewalk. Latin dance music played from the speakers of an old souped-up Toyota, the sound bigger than the car. On the corner a man served halal sandwiches from a large kitchen cart that looked like a freight elevator yanked from its shaft. I found myself staring at a Spanish bodega sandwiched between two Greek restaurants. Yellow awning, red letters. Posters on the windows for phone cards. I needed more coffee.

  The woman behind the cash register had a round face. And behind the deli counter window was a stack of random deli meat nubs, elbow knots of ham wadded up in cellophane, a white dish presenting nothing but a mound of decorative green plastic garnish. I asked if she had any soy milk.

  In a totally surprising and dragging Slavic drawl she said, “You are kidding, correct?”

  “Yes. I’m kidding. Plain milk, no sugar. And a bagel.”

  She winked. “With butter?”

  My stomach gurgled. “Absolutely not.” I pointed to a packet of aspirin.

  I sipped the coffee and swallowed the four aspirin, walked outside, and studied the building’s exterior. It was a yellow brick four-story walk-up. Next door, a sign over a 99¢ store read “Poco Poco.” A table out front was piled with plain white T-shirts and a tilting stack of pink and blue scrub sponges. From the open door blew a nimbus stink of chemical dyes.

  Across the street was a small garage with a sign that read “Fix-a-Flat.” On the oil-stained sidewalk in front of the garage a box radio on a torn leather recliner played fast English metal. High operatic vocals. An older man in a Motörhead T-shirt came out of the garage and saw me. He lowered the volume, and waved in a vague way. He looked a few years younger than Dad. I imagined he had just one child, a son about my age, and they shared an expensive set of custom tools, they lived on the block. They drank beer together and even came to blows once, ten years before, at a cousin’s wedding. And now they worked in the same garage and were always arguing over the radio station. Dad shakes his head saying I don’t care if they do come from Queens, it doesn’t get any better than Motörhead. They never speak of God, of devils and demons, of Armageddon, they never speak of any life but this one, and never once have they figured that the mystery of love and hate, and war and peace, and sex and food and Motörhead should not be enough for us on Earth. It felt good to be out of the dark house, and to be out walking in the sun.

  I looked at the photos again and felt that somehow they made for some weird metaphysical equation that resulted in my eventual going back. Then, one block away, there it was: the Queens Howard Theater. The mammoth overhang of the copper marquee shined like a billion flattened pennies. Spelled out in big block letters: “The Landmark Queens Howard Theater.” I stood under it. A large bronze plaque between the two front doorways read, “Placed on the National Register of Historic Places.” Beneath that, black letters on a shiny new gray-metal sign, “Tours Given.” I got queasy as I remembered standing in that very same spot holding my mother’s hand. She had a brand-new perm, and Dad wore dark maroon penny loafers. Sermon notes were folded in my suit coat pocket, a Star Wars figure somewhere on my person.

  I opened the doors.

  Inside, the place was old and stately, but crumbling, once majestic, like the foyer of some failing antebellum estate. The ceiling still arched high above and a chandelier gently rocked there like a cracked crystal palace above an empty marble fountain. A rusting sign beside the fountain pool read “The Looking Glass.” At either side of the pool, alabaster columns stood at the base of opposing marble stairways that rounded outward and upward. They looked like a pair of smooth white bull’s horns leading to the second floor. The foyer walls were separated into rectangular paneled sections, with an elaborate molded framing for each. Within each frame were fading murals, depictions of famous biblical scenes. The Binding of Isaac. The Four Horsemen, white, red, black, and pale. Some of the murals were cracked, some vandalized, others surrounded by scaffolding. A handful of people were on the scaffolding lightly brushing at the walls.

  No one seemed to mind me taking the stairs.

  At the top, I turned and saw the rigging that held the chandelier in place. I pulled the bagel from my pocket, unwrapped it from the napkin, and bit off a soft chewy lump. There were voices behind me.

  A small group of ten or twelve people; about half were young children and teenagers. The kids looked bored and restless. Some wore headphones. A man in a light pink seersucker suit and oversized horn-rimmed glasses was leading them. He said to me, “Did you want to join us? We’ve not yet seen the Great Room.”

  I made an embarrassing animal grunt, my mouth stuffed with bagel, and I nodded, Yes, please. Taking my place in the back, I puffed out my cheeks, making a funny face at a small boy who had a furrowed brow and wispy eyelashes. He turned away. Who was this kid?

  “The chandelier weighs six hundred and fifty pounds,” the guide said. “And if you wonder how in the world they do this kind of thing, the flowers and candle shapes, the entire piece is made of soda glass.”

  The small boy said, “What kind of soda?”

  The guide went on as if he’d not heard the kid’s question. “She’ll be back in working order soon enough. The fancy parts all fixed. But it’s a slow and very expensive process.”

  A freckled boy of about sixteen quickly took off his headphones. “How much?”

  “A lot.”

  “But how much? A million?”

  I was sure at this moment that raising a teenager must be a hellish thing.

  The guide brushed at the arms of his suit, facing away from the group. “The chandelier, I’m afraid, is a nagging question. It’s not of Howard origin, and we’re not sure where it comes from.” He turned and faced us. “We’re in the business of restoring the original state and spirit of a place.” He waved us toward two doors in the center of a rounded wall. “And now we have the Great Room.”

  He opened the doors. And there it was. I swooned.

  How many times in a life do we swoon? I can think of only a few, and this was one of those: a major swoon. I had to grab hold of the wall because my stomach was flipping and I thought I might vomit. Then it stopped. I realized it was also because of the stink. Burning hair.

  I asked him, “What’s that stink?”

  “Sulfur. We’re raising the foundation some. Found a pocket way below. Ladies and gentlemen, the Great Room. Feel fre
e to move about the balcony.”

  This was beyond déjà vu. It was dream leakage and it physically moved me. I had to step back out into the hall for a second. And then I stepped back onto the balcony of the Great Room. And that same odd rush of memory and oversensation rivered all around me: the ceiling, the stage—I saw him clearly down there, little boy Josiah, little me. Behind the microphone, and standing still. The audience wondering if I’ll finish. Is the boy finished? I watch him lower his arms and bow. A long second passes and it’s clear: It is finished, the boy is finished, and the audience explodes with applause, four thousand clapping their hands, and they raise their arms, clapping above their heads …

  “Sir?” The guide was standing next to me.

  “I’m fine. I’m just—” I knocked on the door, inspecting its hinges. “Beautiful work.” The headache reared up, reminding me it was still there.

  Satisfied, he pressed his hands together in a prayer formation. He bowed. “We do our best.” He approached the edge of the balcony and gripped the brass handrail. “The ceiling, of course, is why we’re here. Note the surface.”

  We all looked up, fifteen or twenty feet above our heads, where the ceiling was a steely gray. It had really faded. Some roundish silver and white static stars like milk splashes decorated the surface, a chipping and powdery plaster shown in blanched swaths from underneath. Then the stars began to glimmer and glow. They shook with a slight and unstable radiance, and they went out.

  The guide was waving a large flashlight at the ceiling.

  He said, “Voilà! You get the general idea.”

  He turned and cast the light onto a greater expanse of the ceiling, where it dissipated into an ecliptic glow. “Now imagine the entire ceiling all lit up with stars and planets and shooting stars. All semifunctional until about fifteen years ago. And by then the Skyrograph, our very wonderful projector, was already sixty years old. She is right now, even as we stand here, being restored off premises. One of very few in the world, and did basically, very basically, what I just did with this flashlight. Only more. Who sees the moon?” He pulled the pant fabric up from his knees, and crouched. He said in higher register to the small children, “Hmm? Who sees the moon?”