by Shawn Inmon
He tried to stand, but his body didn’t respond. After an awkward tumble, he ended up laying face down on the carpet.
Fuck it. This is just fine.
He nestled his face down into the green and orange shag carpeting and mercifully passed out again.
Seven hours later, he pried his eyelids open again. The room was darker now.
Good.
He lifted his face and felt stray carpet strands on his tongue. He tried to spit them out, but one clung stubbornly to his tongue. He performed the gymnastics necessary to wipe it off on his bicep. He managed to sit up, happy to find that he could move all his parts. Two questions ran through his brain simultaneously: What’s that smell? and Why don’t I have to piss anymore? Both questions had a single answer, and Thomas drew as deep a breath as he could, then let it hiss out through his teeth. It wasn’t the first time he had passed out and wet himself, but repeating the process didn’t add to the charm of the experience.
He crawled to the edge of his bed and used the bedpost to pull himself most of the way up. He tried to take off his shoes, but they were too tight. Why do my feet always swell up when I pass out? He finally managed to wedge them off, then peeled off his wet pants and boxers. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. His mom had written, “Be the best you there is!” across the top of the mirror in lipstick two years earlier. Evidently, the best me there is, is a paunchy, skinny-legged slob with no pants on. And I feel at least as lousy as I look.
Then it came: the sudden inevitability of onrushing vomit. He barely made it to the metal trash can before throwing up a long, ribbony cord of puke. He held his face in the can, inhaling the dueling odors of pizza crust, stale beer, and bile. He held that position for thirty seconds, waiting for Round Two, but it didn’t come.
That’s better. Stage One of Dr. Thomas’s hangover cure works again. I should patent it.
Thomas stripped off his shirt, pitched it somewhere near the hamper, and tottered down the hall to his bathroom. He climbed into the shower, turned the water as hot as he could stand it, and stood underneath the spray until the water grew cold. He didn’t bother with soap or shampoo. This wasn’t about hygiene; it was about regaining some form of humanity.
Dripping wet, he stood in front of the medicine cabinet and reached for the aspirin bottle. There was no cap on the bottle. Good plan, Thomas. Way to think ahead. He tipped six aspirin out into his palm, slapped his hand to his mouth, and crunched the pills between his teeth. They tasted nasty, of course, but he had learned that this helped.
He pulled his right eyelid wide apart and peered at his bloodshot eye. Yellow. Jaundiced. That’s not good, if I gave a shit, which I don’t.
He walked back to his room, naked except for the towel around his neck, somewhat further along the evolutionary scale than before. He plucked a pair of neatly folded pajama bottoms and a t-shirt from his dresser. Thanks, Mom. Nothing like being fifty-three years old and still having your mom doing your laundry. On the humiliation scale, that’s got to register right up there with naked public speaking. He pulled the t-shirt over his thinning wet hair, slipped on the PJ bottoms, and sat down on the floor to work on the urine stain. The damp bath towel only went so far, so he tossed it into the basket and stood up. His mother had gotten him a bottle of Stetson cologne for Christmas, and it was on top of his dresser. He opened it, steadied himself against the dresser with one hand, and poured a liberal dose of cologne onto the dark stain.
Good as new. Why it is called toilet water, if not for this?
He should, he knew, go downstairs and make things right with his mother, but couldn’t summon the will. Instead, he sat in the chair and watched the second hand on the clock as it swept his life away. His eyes fell on a small photograph of two teenage boys. It leaned against the lamp on his bedside table, its edges worn smooth by decades of handling. The colors had faded over the years. In the photo, the taller boy had the younger in a headlock. Both were smiling, though the smaller boy's smile was a little forced.
Thomas heaved himself up with a grunt, picked up the picture and held it close. He did this most days of his life, had done so for over thirty years. Had he possessed the slightest degree of art talent, he could have painted it from memory. Behind the boys, a lake beckoned and a breeze ruffled their sun-kissed hair. They squinted into the sun. A good day.
For the ten thousandth time, Thomas said, “I’m sorry, Zack. So damn sorry.” Tears glistened in his eyes.
Thomas put the picture down on the bedside table. The two boys smiled eternally back at him. For just a moment, the ghost of a smile tugged at his own lips in answer, then faded.
When Zack’s Camaro had spun out of control, it had taken Thomas’s life with it. A sense of numb inevitability had settled into him that night. He'd sleepwalked through his junior and senior years at Middle Falls High, his one sodden, underachieving year at Western Oregon State, and six years of marriage. Mercifully, the failed union had produced no children.
Years blurred together after the divorce. In 2004, just before the real estate market took off, it had seemed natural for his Mom to sell her home and move in with him. It wasn’t like he had a social life she could interfere with. By his mid-forties, a series of bad jobs had led him to begin selling cars at Barkley Ford. Early on, it had been the perfect job for him. It had camaraderie, hundreds of wasted hours talking sports, stupid bets, and thousands of gallons of bad coffee. It was the closest he'd ever felt to being at home.
Then Harold Barkley's physician had diagnosed his abdominal pain and leg numbness as spinal cancer. Less than six weeks later, he was gone. So, soon, was Thomas.
And now here he was, in his mid-fifties, unemployed and, if he was honest with himself, unemployable. His checking account contained a robust $849.36, and rent was due in less than a week. There was no savings account. His mom had a few thousand dollars put away for a rainy day, but that wouldn't last long. Then what?
I’ve really tried. I tried to pick up the pieces and move on. I tried to find my center, but I don’t think I have a center anymore. I tried everything, but every day, the pain is a little worse.
I'm even lying to myself. I haven't tried. If it wasn't a quick fix, I gave up and got drunk.
A gaping eternity of darkness opened in front of him, beckoning him, welcoming him. The blackness had a gravity of its own, and it pulled him down, down, down. Finally, he knew what he needed to do. Tears ran down his face. He took a deep breath to steady himself, but it came out in a series of small shuddering sobs. He ran the back of his hand across his eyes. Okay. Okay. First things first. Let’s try to do at least this one thing right. I've done little enough right in my days.
He fished around in his desk drawer, found a clean sheet of college-ruled paper, uncapped one of his blue Bic pens, and started to write.
Mom –
I suppose I should start by saying I’m sorry, but I’ve been saying that all my life. I don’t know if it means anything any more. It feels like I’ve been running away from this decision ever since the night I killed Zack.
“I killed Zack.” He had never written or spoken those words before, but they had hung over his head since that night, an eternal, unspoken accusation. The few times he had come close, he had backed away, lest the words gain even more terrible power over his life. Now, too late, he found that putting them on paper brought a bit of perspective.
I wish it had been me, that night, instead of Zack. If I'd had the sense to buckle him in, if I hadn't been so rattled, if I hadn't been so eager to hang out with kids playing kid status games, Zack would probably still be alive. He would have made you proud. I haven't.
I know you would have been sad about me dying, too, but at least I would have done it to myself. I really do love you, Mom. I've done a crappy job of showing it, but I hope you know that. I don’t think there’s anything on the other side, but if I’m wrong, then I’ll see you there eventually. Zack and I will be waiting for you.
Tommy
&n
bsp; He looked at the short note. His handwriting still looked like a grade schooler’s. He folded the single page and left it on top of his keyboard where she couldn’t miss it. He walked to the bathroom, poured a glass of water, then carried it back to his bedroom. He sat the water on the nightstand, then frowned down at the crumpled bed sheets and blankets. The corner of his mouth twitched in disapproval.
Nothing else for it, then.
He stripped and remade the bed. Five minutes later, it was an island of perfection in the sea of crap and chaos that was his room.
He reached into the nightstand drawer and pulled out a small plastic bag containing several dozen small white pills. As he had stolen them from his mother's medication cabinet, he had told himself they were in case he ever had trouble sleeping.
The time for lies had passed. I’ve known this was coming for a long time now. Glad it’s finally here. Let's be honest, this one last chance: my life has been a gradual trip to the bottom, and I'm there.
He emptied the pills onto the smooth coverlet and divided them up into groups of three. He had never been able to swallow more than three pills at a time unless he chewed them first. He was afraid that these might taste horrible and make him throw up again, so he wanted to swallow them whole.
The last swallow from the glass finished off the last little group of pills.
‘Tis done.
He looked down at the freshly made bed. That’s too nice to mess up. Thomas Weaver So, he lay down on his side on the floor, pulled his legs up, and tucked his hands between his knees.
In five minutes, he fell into a barbiturate sleep.
Twenty minutes later, he was gone.
Lap Two: 1976
Sunshine.
Sunshine? What the hell?
Before Thomas came fully awake, part of his brain tried to make sense of that. He had fallen asleep, theoretically forever, in a dark bedroom, with the blinds shut tight. Where in the hell was sunshine coming from?
Wait. What? Where am I?
Thomas opened his eyes. Something was surreal. At first glimpse, his surroundings bore an astonishing resemblance to the bedroom he had shared with Zack. He closed his eyes tight.
Nope. No way. Don’t know where I was heading, but I’m sure it’s not here. Gotta still be alive, and this is my brain playing This is Your Life, Thomas Weaver.
He rubbed his fists into closed eyes, then opened them slowly, squinting against both the light and the impossible reality.
It was still there.
A perfect replica of his teenage bedroom.
Thomas sat straight up with a start, expecting it to dissolve into the specter of another phase in his life, but it remained.
He was no longer on his side on the floor, but on his back in bed. His bed, a twin, from his high school years, the one topped with a bright orange cotton spread that had symmetrical raised ridges across it. He remembered laying under that bedspread, pulling off little pieces of the ridges and rolling them into little orange balls. He hadn’t thought of doing that in decades.
The bedroom walls were covered in fake wood grain paneling. To celebrate the bicentennial, Zack had painted each individual stripe red, white and blue. It looked as perfectly garish in this dream as it had in real life. Farrah Fawcett and her impossibly white teeth beamed down from the poster above Zack’s bed. A round night table sat just to the right of his bed. Against the other wall was an empty twin bed, Zack’s. Zack's cheap old stereo sat on the night stand between the beds.
It was the most lifelike dream he could imagine. Sunlight flowed in through the window above his head, warm and gentle. He thought he might get up, and see if the darkest recesses of his dying brain had created the rest of his childhood house in such intricate detail. Or, was it a typical dream, and he would step outside the bedroom into a funhouse collage of other memories? He just smiled a little at the memory-visit, laid down, and closed his eyes once more.
He gathered his thoughts. He had never killed himself before, so he had no idea what was supposed to happen. This all felt so real...
He cracked his left eye open.
Sunshine. Orange bedspread. Record player. Thomas folded the covers back and swung his legs out of bed. His bare feet landed on what passed for carpet in their old bedroom. It was thin, a horrible amalgam of browns, oranges, and reds, and seemed to have no padding underneath. Why did anyone make a carpet so ugly? Was it intentionally manufactured to be sold as a remnant?
He glanced down at himself and almost choked.
When he had committed suicide, he had weighed around 220 pounds. Now he looked down at stick-thin legs with bones jutting every which way. He was wearing tighty whiteys and a plain white t-shirt. Thomas stood up, noticed the old swivel mirror atop the dresser at the foot of his bed, and walked toward it. I am pretty sure of what I'm going to see, though I'm not sure how to handle it.
He was skinny. More shockingly, he was young. His teenage face stared back at him. No. Was I ever that young? The wrinkles, the bags under his eyes, the beginning jowliness—all gone. When he raised his eyebrows, so did the reflection. Tommy leaned a little closer into the mirror. There was a hint of an old acne breakout at the lower left side of his mouth, and a new pimple graced his nose. His hair was intensely curly, sticking out at all angles. He hadn't worn it this long in many years.
His bladder was full.
Shit. If you pee in a dream, or whatever this is, you pee in the bed, right? I can’t let that happen. I don’t want Mom to find me laying in my own piss.
His bladder insisted.
I need to wake up. Or move on to whatever fresh hell might be waiting for me next.
In the meantime, pissing is going to happen, somewhere. Maybe if I do it in the toilet in my dream, I'll have sleepwalked there, and will not completely miss the toilet, or forget and piss with the lid down. He flung open the door and scrambled down the hall toward the only bathroom in the house.
He made it, if barely. No morning leak had ever felt so good, even if tinged with worry that he was wetting the bed back in the apartment. He took a look around the bathroom as he flushed; in real estate, they would call it 'dated.' Very dated. The toilet and bathtub in matching pale mustard yellow, yellow daisy appliqués on the mirror, a straw laundry hamper in the corner with a forest green top: Vietnam era all the way. He saw a scale on the floor beside it.
Over the years, Thomas had avoided scales, unless starting a new diet or being forced to get on one at a doctor’s office. Would it show his hallucination-weight, or his real weight? The dial came to rest on 148.
One hundred forty-eight pounds! The most successful diet of all time. “Congratulations, Mr. Weaver, you just lost seventy pounds. Can you tell us your secret?” “Well, Dr. Oz. First I got really depressed. Then I tried to kill myself and woke up weighing seventy pounds less. It’s both easy and fun.”
Thomas put the lid down on the cushioned toilet seat and sat on it to collect himself. Whatever this was, it showed no signs of ending. He stood, opened the bathroom door as quietly as he could, and slipped out into the living room. A small brown dachshund stared up at him, brown eyes like beacons of curiosity. He kneeled in the hallway and extended his hand. “Amy? Is that you?” His mom had named her “Amiable,” after her easygoing personality, but they had always called her “Amy.” The little dog waddled forward, sniffed his outstretched hand, then gave a little chuff and backed away. She didn’t bark or growl, but something wasn't what she had expected.
“I don’t blame you, Amy. I’m a little weirded out by this whole thing too.” Thomas walked into the living room. The first thing he noticed was the lingering rankness of stale cigarette smoke, the residue of his mother’s Viceroys. He had forgotten that she had smoked in the house.
In those days restaurants had smoking sections, airplanes allowed smoking, and everyone who smoked, smoked in the house.
The living room was just as he remembered it. The heavy lined burgundy curtains kept the room dark in spite of the br
ight sunshine outside. School pictures of Zack and Tommy decorated the walls, comprising a time capsule of their school years and ending with Zack's junior picture. Sculptured gold carpet covered the floor. To his left were the stereo cabinet and a 27” Curtis Mathes color TV. He remembered the day it had been delivered. He had been so excited to watch his cartoons in color on Saturday morning that he had barely been able to sleep the night before. Across from the TV sat a tan couch festooned with red, orange and green flowers, and the La-Z-Boy recliner that his mom sat in every night to read the paper.
The paper.
A rolled-up newspaper stuck out of the magazine rack. With growing trepidation, he walked across the living room and collected the rolled-up Oregonian.
It was dated Under the masthead, the date was displayed as Friday, April 16, 1976. The headline was about Good Friday services. Thomas sat down in the La-Z-Boy and began to read.
A metallic click broke the silence, one Thomas remembered as the latch on his mother's room door. He heard the soft shuffling of slippered feet approaching, peppered with excited canine footfalls.
Mom.
Her hair was askew, and still dishwater blonde. She wore an old housecoat over her dressing gown. She walked past Thomas as if he were invisible, started coffee, then lit a Viceroy. He peered over to watch as she got a cup from the cupboard, poured some milk in it, and stood by the pot to smoke while the pot percolated.
My God. She’s so young. And pretty. I don’t remember her ever looking that way.
Hey. She walked by me like I was invisible. Maybe I am invisible. Maybe I’m not really here after all—just visiting like one of the ghosts in A Christmas Carol.
Tommy stood up from her chair and took three tentative steps toward the kitchen. “Mom?”
His voice sounded high-pitched and slightly strangled. He put his hand to his throat. She didn't look. “What?”
Can you see me?
Don’t be ridiculous. If she heard me, she can see me.
