Guilt

The little Spanish girl with wavy black hair and round buttocks started to tell me about her aunt that died last summer. I listened to her,sort of, but my mind wandered to things I had to get done, and bills that had to be paid, and to what to do about dinner.
"The thing about my aunt," said the Spanish girl, "is that before she got sick, she was very beautiful. I remember watching her swim at the city pool in the summer months, all those laps back and forth with her long legs. All the men watched her. This one old man would come there to the pool every morning when we were there. He'd sit in his chair and roll tobacco, I think it was tobacco, into cigarette paper and lick it to get it to stick. He did this while he watched my aunt swim." 
I looked at the girl and smiled. I started to clean the room. I straightened the chairs and desks. She was quiet and must have realized that I only half listened. 
"Can I tell you something that I haven't told anyone before?" she asked me while she followed me around the room.
"What's that? oh, sure, go ahead. I'm listening to you, I just need to clean up a little, but I'm listening go a head." I said. I picked up a literature book and piled it on top of the other books by the window.
"You see, that story that you read to us in class reminded me of something. I never told anyone this, but when my aunt got ill and she was in the bed all day and sick, my cousins and I used to go and visit her, and she used to l want us to stay with her and tell her about the boys we had met, and about going to the beach and dances. Anything really. And in just a few months her beauty was gone. Her swimmers legs that the men had liked so much were nothing but bones; the disease had had its way with her. Maybe she got sick from all that swimming in the public pool or something. I don't know, but she got real sick real fast"
I sat back at my desk and started to pack my bag with books and note books.
"Have you ever had anyone close to you get sick like that?" she said
"What?" I said 
"You know like really ill, sick, cancer or something?"
I saw her now, sitting there in front of me, holding her black winter coat with the fake fur collar, and I realized what she had just asked me.
"yes," I said. " a long time ago."
She smiled. "Then, you kind of know what I am talking about" she said
"So, what I'm trying to tell you, is that that story you read today about the little poor girl in the projects, that was real close to what had happened to me. You see, my aunt was real ill, in bed, and my mother made us go and sit with her and talk to her. And it got so that we didn't want to go, because, well you see, the room smelled. It smelled like pee and poo. I guess it smelled like sickness." She patted the fake fur collar as she talked to me.
"My cousins and I used to try to avoid sitting in there with her. When we were finally able to leave we would...we would make fun of my aunt. Can you imagine that?" Her hand stopped patting the fur and just gripped it now.
"My cousins and me we would imitate her voice and mock her. The sickness had done something to the poor woman's voice and made it nasally and high, and my cousins and I would leave her bedroom and start talking high pitched like her. Then we would laugh and hold our noses to mock the smell." She looked up at me and her eyes glistened.
"You see, I guess I never really thought about it till today, when you read that story to us about that little ghetto girl, and it all kind of hit home to me." She looked away now. " How awful I was to my aunt. If only I could go back to that room, and bring some flowers to her. I'd hold her hand. I would tell her all the stories about the beach and boys that she would want."
We were quiet. I tried to think of something to say.
" I wonder, you know some times, if the dead can hear us, if they can see us, you know?" I don't mean like that movie with the boy who can see the ghosts, but maybe like, like late at night, when I'm in bed and talking lower and praying and thinking of my aunt...I wonder if she can hear me if she can ever know how sorry I am."
She started to pat the collar again.
"I'm sorry for being so melodramatic and sappy. You must think that I am just a silly little teenager."
"Of course you are." I said, and winked at her. She smiled.
"So," she said "If you don't mind me asking, who was it ?"
"Who was what?" I said
"You said that someone close to you had got ill and died like my aunt. I was just wondering who that was. You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."
"No, no, that's OK, if you really want to know, it was my Father."
"Was he sick for a long time?"
"For about a year, and then he died much like the way your aunt had."
"I'm sorry," She said
"That's alright, it was quite some time ago now"
"How long ago?"
I closed my eyes and concentrated. "It was February 5th, 1990." I said " I remember, it was really cold and there was a lot of old snow on the ground."
"Wow, that's a big coincidence." she said
"What is?" I said
"Don't you know?" She said
"Know what?" 
Her hand was still and she smiled at me.
"Today, is February 5th" she said.

A Letter to Edie

Well, now you remember that nice coat you got me that one Christmas during that endless winter; the same winter that whiskey Jack got sick and died? I really loved that coat and it's warm collar that secret pocket it had for my silver engraved flask to hide. I took that coat with its treated leather and folded its sleeves neat and placed it in a old priest trunk that I found in the rectory attic.  I took the parcels, pictures, post cards and letters that you sent over the years of our delusion, Edie, and I mixed them in with some of hers too and sprinkled them all over like grave dirt and used all that stuff and covered that old coat with the blood stain on the right sleeve that you gave me that one Christmas during that endless winter; the very same winter we snuggled away the cold while we sat around the open door of that electric stove. 
 Remember when the lights went out and there was only you and me and all that stuff we were so afraid of...And the thunder shook the window glass and you said something cool like it that it sounded like God was shuffling his feet?...And we huddled under that coat in front of the oven on the tile of the kitchen floor on top of the sleeping bag that was too close to the smelly cat box that we were too cold and lazy to change. I wore that coat like a badge. And now the coat you gave me that one Christmas during that cold winter, when John ran barefoot crazy in his underwear during the snow storm looking for a way to die, is under a blanket of love letters and Christmas cards and closed in an old wooden trunk. The kind of trunk that an old priest would take on across Atlantic cruise liner trip. To me you were like an addiction. Can you tell me, was it healthy, Edie? I used to care, but, things have changed.

A Bench near the edge

May 18th, 2001.South Station, Boston, Train side, early evening. A woman appeared at the end of the platform as promised. She wore a gray rain coat, big black dark sun glasses and red lipstick. Slender legs peaked out from the folds of the coat as she walked. She carried a little blue suitcase and wheeled a larger bag behind her. She looked Mediterranean, perhaps Spanish or Portuguese. She stopped in front of me and reached into her pocket. She took out a nickel plated flask and sipped, and patted her mouth dry with her sleeve. I stepped towards her.  She was French, of course.
The platform shook like a little earthquake as a train arrived. Paper trash fluttered off the track and back down. The train hissed.
I looked at her and watched her drink " I miss doing that" I said
She wiped her mouth this time with her hand. Her fingernails were polished. She held the flask out to me and smiled "been a while for you has it?" If I ever had any doubt as to whether or not I loved her it was settled at that moment. I did not.
Then she said the strangest thing I think I have ever heard. "What if I told you that fear isn't real?" The old familiar odor emanated from the flask's silver spout. I looked up at the clouds. Droplets of rain sprinkled my forehead.
" A man without fear is a man without hope." I said
" Nietzsche or Freud?" she asked
I laughed at myself. I looked at her face to face now, and she was beautiful.
"Father Everett" I answered.
She inched her hand along my arm and into my hand.
"Just be here and now. Forget about the past." she said softly, soothingly.
I reached and took off her black sun glasses. I was reminded of the day we met.
" I once spent a year in Philadelphia; I think it was on a Sunday"
"Groucho?" she guessed?
"Close" I said, "W.C. Fields"
" Philadelphia was a long time ago" She said and eased her body snugly under my arm. We walked to a bench and sat there near the edge. She placed her blue suit case down and opened an umbrella. She handed the umbrella to me and I held it above us. It was a complicated operation: umbrella, flask and french girl. Water beaded on the rails then spilled onto the gravel rocks between the tracks.
"How is he?" I asked
She rested her head on my shoulder and sighed.
" He is distant, distracted, self centered, gambles and spends time at Japanese massage parlors, and thinks that I don't know, and....he is my husband now" She said
"Glad to know some things haven't changed" I said
"And you, how have been your last 2 years?" She asked
She opened her blue suit case. Inside I viewed lace panties, and a full bottle which she used to refill the flask.
"I don't know how my last 2 years have been but judging by what's in your bag my next 2 hours are looking promising."
"She paused and said, "my train is leaving in 20 minutes"
"Then, maybe not"
"Why the Move to New York?"
"There is a position he took, entry level at a Firm" She said...."You should call him there, he'd like that..I'd like that."
"We haven't talked since Atlantic City, but maybe I will. Good for him, I'm glad for him, really...His dreams are coming true..what is the name of the firm? Have I heard of them?" She rested her head against my shoulder and then turned and kissed my cheek. "It has an Irish name like the Gatsby writer." She said..two names..I thought for a moment ...."Cantor-Fitzgerald?" ...."Oui. That's is the one." She pecked my cheek as we watched people board. "I will miss you, she said..and you know, he will too." "Perhaps." I said

Naked

We were sitting on a bench outside the Whaling Museum in New Bedford. Court was in recess for lunch. There was a terrible car accident the night before. My friend had been there. He had burns to both hands. His Fingers poked out through holes of the bandages like bold warms. She drove out of the club parking lot onto the Island road in her station wagon." His voice was low and empty. She was going home to her 3 kids." He wore a black baseball cap and black sun glasses. "The paper of course had to sensationalize it....'STRIPPER DIES IN HEAD ON COLLISION' The assholes. I wish they knew what she was like...Actually, screw that...they don't deserve to know anything about her her. The same goes for the guys in the club, they had no idea what she was like. they could care less. I say F**k em, F**k em all.

"I'd like to hear about her." I said. He looked at me. I could see anger leave his face. His eyes opened wide. I'm not sure what to say about her, really." 

"Well, tell me this, what'd she like to do on her days off?"

A smile came to his face. "She liked to smoke pot on Sunday mornings and brew expensive gourmet coffee."

"She'd have the entire day free cause her ex would take the kids." He continued Sundays were her everything. She'd listen to 'Breakfast with the Beatles' on the radio while watching "The Phantom Gourmet" on the T.V. with the volume turned down. She'd roll a giant joint and bake Blue Berry Muffins in the oven. Her voice is in my head, you know, asking me how many eggs I want, or if I want to make a run to some tag sales etc..., and she was so pretty, you know. Even when she had bed head, wore no make up and bopped around half the day in her frumpy pink bathrobe, She looked great.

A group of grade school kids in Catholic school uniforms filed off a bus and into formation and marched single file into the Museum. a couple of the kids stole glances at my friends bandages as they passed. Once they were out of ears reach, he spoke. "She had this little precious freckle in a spot on her body that even the guys who gave her dollar bills at the club couldn't see." He whispered. "She told me that it was now my freckle and named it after me." 

"I was the first one at the crash. He said. " When I got to her, I knew..I knew...she was dead. Her teeth were clenched and her eyes were shut. She must have known. She must have closed her eyes when she saw the head lights. She must have known.... All I could do at that point was stand there and gawk at her. I tried to undo her seat belt and didn't even feel the flames burn my hands. He raised his arms and looked at them. She seemed so, naked. Isn't that a strange thing to say? A woman who made her money taking her clothes off on stage, and here she was in this mangled station wagon fully clothed.... and yet so fucking naked, and I  stood there glaring at her like a drunk with a wad of singles.

He took off his glasses and looked at me. His eyes were bloodshot and desperate. I finally got the seat belt undone and started to lift her out and...and ...her head fell forward and ... a drop of blood fell from her eye. It rolled down her cheek and into my hand." He looked over at me now.

"What's it all about, Brian?" he asked. "I mean, when all is said and done"

I brushed away something invisible off my pant leg. "I don't have that answer." I said.
He nodded and put his sunglasses back on. He tilted his head back and rested on the wooden bench. I watched his Adam's apple move up and down his neck like he was waiting for some invisible hooded executioner to let an ax fall.

My friend tilted forward and held his hands out palms up to the sky, as if he had surrendered to something or someone invisible. He had come to know quite thoroughly the world in which he lived. His outlook was bleak. The world as he saw it was a brutal world, a world without warmth, a world in which affection dies senselessly on a dark road outside a strip club. And I felt helpless to convince him otherwise.

A distant hell

They paddled me back to shore in a dimly lit hospital room. Nurse Cat dressed in strawberry colored scrubs, she a perfect stranger yet my only friend. Her profession was her religion, and she held my hand as I rambled on in garbled intoxication. I sang to her the lyrics of an old Alice Cooper song of all things. "Sleeping don't come easy in a straight white vest." These words I sang over and over again. The Ballad of Dwight Frye.
I missed my wife. I missed her so much. I hated the dumpster full of pain I had heaped on her lap. The Nurse named Cat listened with patience to the circus that twirled in the pathetic stupor of my head. She even joined me quietly later when I whispered the Lord's Prayer for for the 8th or 9th time; her accent enriched the perfect words. I finally passed out; Cat's gently eyes the last vision I beheld. My wife's tears poured and drowned out my consciousness.
I woke in the back of an Ambulance climbing Chestnut Hill to a detox. The romantic death I longed for deprived me and replaced with humiliated disgust. I hated the putrid smell of my body. I tried to open the ambulance door with my mind so that I may ride out and rid myself of my filth. I fell off to sleep again.
At midnight I swallowed some pills offered to me by an agent of the detox. I noticed that the ceiling was moving. It reminded me of the painted ceiling of Saint Catherine's Church. Jesus and Moses and the Holy Throne all came to life in a dark crimson Cartoon above my bed. I watched them for a while and then started to fall off again. Some one said "You're in the wrong place my friend". And all the Saints on the ceiling nodded except Jim Morrison who laughed and told me,  "You are exactly where you belong."
On the 3rd day the floor still moved but I managed to stand. My blue hospital pants wafted of sanitized cleaner. I checked out against medical advisement. My temporary roommates wished me good luck as they smoked their cigarettes under the branches of a large oak that stood outside the home for journeying addicts. I caught the city bus at Forest Hills still dressed in my hospital blues. Anne Sexton.s grave just several ironic feet in a cemetery next to the Station from which my Bus departed. 
The door to my home was locked when I arrived. I no longer had a key. I crouched with my back against the glass of the back door. My two small dogs and my one fat cat took turns trying to kiss me through the glass. My wife agreed to let me in only if I promised to leave. And here I sit writing this 2 days removed.

Jumper's Lament

1991, France: 
Charlene complained about the tall wired fence that circled the ledge. I told her what had been told to me; the fence kept people from jumping. More suicides happened at this spot than in any other place in Europe. We had climbed 328 dust covered steps up the narrow and winding confines of the Cathedral’s spire and out on to its roof. Any regrets we had about the climb disappeared

 when we walked out onto the roof and viewed the sun slowly setting over the countryside. Pigeons cooed and circled in front of us. "I thought that maybe the fence was for all the pigeons." She said.
“Silly, Pigeons can fly, why would they try to commit suicide by jumping?" I asked. She looked up at me,“No, I meant to keep them from pooing on the.." She saw my smirk and punched my shoulder. The copper colored roof tops of Strasbourg village shined below in the sun's setting reflection. I wondered about the people who came here and jumped, hundreds, maybe thousands over the centuries. What thoughts raced through the jumper's mind when he climbed the final 300 steps of his life. "I don't understand how they are able to walk onto this roof and through this last scene of beauty and still think the World is ugly enough to leap over the ledge. Look at this place; it's like we are in a Monet painting. Morons, they all must be crazy or drunk or both." She reached out and touched my arm.
"And what about the couples that jump together? Do they stop and have sex one last time? Can the man even get erect knowing it’s his last?” She said. I thought about it a bit, leave it to her to equate sex and suicide. “Maybe he gets the best erection ever.” I said. "Maybe they gaze out at the beauty here, and watch God's sun setting and falling into the arms of Man's City one last time. Maybe they stand on the ledge and look down, and maybe, just maybe the turmoil in their heads is finally quiet in their heart is calm. I heard once that people who commit suicide are most happy right before."
I opened a small bottle I took out from my pocket, and I unfolded a red cloth that held some cheese and grapes we’d purchased in a shop across from the Cathedral. We ate in a loud silence; the pigeons watched our every move. And I liked to watch her. She had a small reddish blue birth mark on her face that added to her looks instead of the opposite. She caught me looking at her and reached her hand into my coat pocket. I kissed her hard. She explored my pocket a little more and found another bottle and took it out, opened the metal top and took a drink and passed it to me. We looked out at the Vanilla sky and she rested her head on my shoulder.

It ended for us about a year later, far away from the Cathedral, fighting in my old apartment. She called me selfish and told me I’d become pathetic. She tried to hurt me and told me about other men who she had been interested in. She told me she had wasted too much of her life with me. I made no argument; I had no argument to make.

2012: I found a Postcard with Monet's painting of the Strasbourg Cathedral on the front. The Postcard was stuck in between the pages of my paperback copy of “A Moveable Feast.” Andie MacDowell had given this book to me as a present at the end of long week we’d spent working together for Filene’s; she had promoted a new perfume, and I had chauffeured her from store to store and to various radio and TV stations. She had just made the movie “Green Card around that time,” and I believe was in pre-production for “Groundhog day.” I remember she was the first person I met who owned a cellphone. She would spend a lot of the time on the phone talking to her husband, also a model, who was on location in France. I told her I had just returned from a trip from there. The book is one of my favorites and I return to its dog eared pages often.
On page 12, Hemingway writes about his struggle with writer’s block, "All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know." I looked at the post card picture of the Cathedral. On its back there was an old and familiar signature. Another person’s signature is like a photograph of that person. This particular signature embodied an entire photo album. Twenty years is a long time indeed. "Write the truest sentence you know.”

Maybe after climbing all the stairs to the top of the Cathedral, a jumper thinks, “Well, at least, I don't have to walk all the way back down.