Peter Liu - Watering Heaven

“But the truth is what makes her interesting.”

“What do you mean?”

“I love people for their scars,” I replied. “No scars and they’re a bore.”

“Self-induced scars are signs of stupidity.”

“Then I’d be the stupidest man alive.”

He laughed. “It’s curious how normalcy seems so abnormal when surrounded by abnormalities.”

“Then it’s normalcy you’re searching for?”

“Or the lack thereof,” he replied.

We conversed for a few more minutes. He excused himself to go use the restroom. An hour later, I realized he wasn’t returning and was filled with a pang of regret. I wished I could have at least said farewell.

V.

As a nine-year old boy infatuated with imagined histories and treasure coves of lost fortunes, there was no moment more exciting than when my mother brought home twelve boxes filled with old telephones. Her younger brother, my uncle, had died in a motorcycle accident and left them to her in his will. We set them up all over the apartment: oblong ones, coldly metallic ones. There were phones I thought carved from dead dinosaur bones, others from ancient Egyptian ceramics buried with resurrected pharaohs. There were cords made from the leather of old British armor sets and hides from sharks who’d struggled violently with fishermen for weeks. Many of the cases had been constructed from frozen plastic secretly harvested from the moon. It was a laboratory for the senses, all the phones hooked up so that one ring would result in a chaotic opera of discordant ringtones vying for domination. I’d run to pick up, curious who it was. I’d hope for a sword swallower, a piano virtuoso with cerebral palsy playing with her toes, an eco-terrorist who poured yogurt inside fuselages. Instead, it was almost always sales people wanting to talk about bills and special offers.

My adulthood would be different. I’d meet a million different people, holding conversation parties with the entire world. My ear would be a permeable vessel for the turbulence of their thoughts, a balloon brimming with the hydrogen of inspiration and the volatility of revolutionary musings. We’d chat about a metropolis where people only spoke in musical chords and plan a city made entirely of vegetables: Carrot Lake, the Celery Towers, Radish Hall. But to my disappointment, no one ever really wanted to talk about anything except their problems. That’s when they wanted to talk.

At the end of our relationship, I couldn’t get my wife to say anything, no matter how hard I tried. I called her from all over the world and all that ensued was a rote, automated conversation that could have lasted one minute as easily as three thousand. I wondered how many passionless I love you s had been carried across the transatlantic cables, how much lusterless joy and rueless savagery that blended apathy with hatred and bliss. Even my hatred felt obtuse over the phone.

Many had their destiny invisibly carved by phones, ones with the musty smell of disuse and dirt, or the lean fragrance of congealed honey and ketchup stains. I knew a man who killed himself because his girlfriend left him, not realizing she would call him eight minutes after his suicide, confessing her mistake and expressing her desire to return. One woman stopped to take a wrong phone call on her way to work. The delay caused her to run a yellow light as it turned red, resulting in the car on the other side ramming her from the left. I knew of an uncle who could never forgive himself for missing his wife’s phone call as she lay dying in a hospital because he’d turned the ringer off to take a nap.

I grew up surrounded by his phones.

VI.

I often strolled through the park alone. This particular morning, I noticed a young woman playing chess by herself. She had light blonde hair that undulated into a field of cherry freckles scattered across her dapper cheeks. She possessed an airy posture as though she were floating, continually swaying her body from side to side, gripping her seat so that she wouldn’t fly off. I sat across from her and asked if I could join her.

She nodded her head without expression.

I noticed she was several moves into her game, playing herself.

“Who’s winning?”

She didn’t answer, absorbed in making her moves.

I stared as she moved her pieces, retreating or defending appropriately. The rook took bishop. Pawn, the knight. After a few moves, the game was over. She set up and started again.

Some time passed before a man came by.

“Excuse me, what are you doing?” he asked.

“I was hoping to get a game of chess.”

“And?”

“She hasn’t really said anything to me. I’m sorry, is she your…” I hung on the your .

He dutifully completed it for me. “My patient. She’s deaf and mute… I think it’d be best if you leave now,” he said.

“Does she come here every day to play chess?”

“Sir.”

“Maybe she wants some competition.”

“She’s been doing this every day of her life for the last ten years. I don’t think she wants any company.”

I looked at her. Then got up. She was still absorbed in her chess game. As far as she was concerned, I was never even there.

VII.

But I couldn’t just walk away.

VIII.

She wasn’t there the next day, nor the one after. But she was there on the third day. No one was around and I sat across from her. She said nothing, kept on playing. I thought about the conversations I’d heard earlier that day. A couple of guys asked some friends out to play croquet on donkeys. A young lady dressed in expensive clothes called in sick as her male friend waited outside the booth. A teenager was telling someone about a problem.

“I’m obsessed. I can’t stop drinking shampoo and cologne. I get so caught up with the idea of violating and destroying all the disgusting smells inside me. It’s like taking my hand, sticking it down my throat and ripping out my larynx and splattering it all over the floor ‘cause my shoes and shirts stink so bad. It runs through my head a million times. You try to think about this lady’s nice Tiffany necklace and how much her husband spent getting it for her and there’s all the beautiful people in the world and all of them stink to hell when they die or take a shit or wake up in the morning. All I’m thinking is, When is work over so I can go home and chew on soap? I can’t stop myself. I know it’s going to screw me badly, but even then, I just think, one more time, one more time. I’m so tired of bad smells.

The chess player waved her hands at me. I startled, looking up. She was making a writing gesture with her fingers. I checked my pockets, found a pen. She ripped out a piece of paper from her notepad and wrote, am i here?

I stared at her. “Uhh. I…” But she shook her hand and gestured that I write it out for her.

Yes , I wrote.

how can you tell? She had very pretty writing.

Because you are sitting across from me

how do you know im not just part of imagination?

You’re playing chess

touch my face

She grabbed my hand, then directed it to her face. When my palm pressed against her cheek, she closed her eyes and held it.

Abruptly, she let go and wrote furiously on the paper. When she finished, she pushed the paper across to me.

It read, i am disappearing every day. no one wants to talk to me. my parents stopped coming long ago. eventually, i will be gone. i cant speak or hear anything. nothing exists for me, just like this chess game. i play and play every day but no one remembers, no one can tell you who died on the battlefield and who sacrificed their life for victory. i collected feathers to try to see, marbles and crayons from countries you’ve never heard of and colors that no longer exist. but none of them convinced me i was real. even you dont exist. i cant tell that you do. i feel your touch but i could be imagining it. sometimes, i pretend i can hear people but i know i cant. if you cant hear people and they cant hear you, you dont exist .