Robert Butler: Tabloid Dreams

And there she was. There was order here, for the moment, women being helped into a boat by their husbands and by the ship’s officers, though the movements were not refined now, there was a quick fumbling to them. But she was apart from all that. She was at the railing and looking forward. I came to her.

“Hello,” I said.

She turned her face to me and at last I could see her beauty. She was caught full in the bridge lights now. I wished it were the moon again, but in the glare of the incandescent bulbs I could see the delicate thinness of her face, the great darkness of her eyes, made more beautiful, it seemed to me, by the faint traces of her age around them. She was younger than I, but she was no young girl; she was a woman with a life lived in ways that perhaps would have been very interesting to share, in some other place. Though I know now that in some other place I never would have had occasion or even the impulse — even the impulse, I say — to speak to her of anything, much less the events of her life or the events of my own life, pitiful as it was, though I think she would have liked India. As I float here in this strange place beneath this muffled light I think she would have liked to go out to India and turn that remarkable intuition of hers, the subtle responsiveness of her ear and her sight and even the bottoms of her feet, which told her the truth of our doom, she would have liked to turn all that sensitivity to the days and nights of India, the animal cries in the dark and the smell of the Bay of Bengal and the comfort of a bed shrouded in mosquito netting and the drifting to sleep.

Can this possibly be me speaking? What is this feeling? This speaking of a bed in the same breath with this woman? The shroud above me is moving in this place where I float. It strips away and there are the shadows of two figures there. But it’s the figure beside me on the night I died that compels me. She stood there and she turned her face to me and I know now that she must have understood what it is to live in a body. She looked at me and I said, “You must go into a boat now.”

“I was about to go below and wait,” she said.

“Nonsense. You’ve known all along what’s happening. You must go into the lifeboat.”

“I don’t know why.”

“Because I ask you to.” How inadequate that answer should have been, I realize now. But she looked into my face and those dark eyes searched me.

“You’ve dressed up,” she said.

“To see you off,” I said.

She smiled faintly and lifted her hand. I braced for her touch, breathless, but her hand stopped at my tie, adjusted it, and then fell once more.

“Please hurry.” I tried to be firm but no more than whispered.

Nevertheless, she turned and I fell in beside her and we took a step together and another and another and we were before the lifeboat and a great flash of light lit us from above, a crackling fall of orange light, a distress flare, and she was beside me and she looked again into my eyes. My hands and arms were already dead, it seemed, they had already sunk deep beneath the sea, for they did not move. I turned and there was a man in uniform and I said, “Officer, please board this lady now.”

He offered his hand to her and she took it and she moved into the end of the queue of women, and in a few moments she stepped into the boat. I shrank back into the darkness, terribly cold, feeling some terrible thing. One might expect it to be a fear of what was about to befall me, but one would be wrong. It was some other terrible thing that I did not try to think out. The winch began to turn and I stepped forward for one last look at her face, but the boat was gone. And my hands came up. They flailed before me and I didn’t understand. I could not understand this at all.

So I went back to the smoking lounge, and the place was empty. I was very glad for that. I sat in the leather chair and I struck a match and I held it before my cigar and then I put it down. I could not smoke, and I didn’t understand that either.

But above me there are two faces, pressed close, trying to see into this place where I float. I move. I shape these words. I know that they heard me when I cried out. When I felt the emptiness, even of this spiritual body. They were the ones who thrashed above me. Not swimming in the sea. Not drowning with me in the night the Titanic sank. I stood before her and my arms were dead, my hands could not move, but I know now what it is that brought me to a quiet grief all my corporeal life long. And I know now what it is that I’ve interrupted with my cry. These two above me were floating on the face of this sea and they were touching. They had known to raise their hands and touch each other.

At the end of the night I met her, I put my cigar down, and I waited, and soon the floor rose up and I fell against the wall and the chair was on top of me, and I don’t remember the moment of the water, but it made no difference whatsoever. I was already dead. I’d long been dead.

This is how I found out I could see things in another way: one night Roy and me had a big argument and this wasn’t unusual for us, really, but he was calling me some pretty bad names and one thing and another happened and my glass eye popped out. He never hit me. Not like the husbands and wives I sit in front of to take down their words in the courtroom when they’re on the stand. But Roy can talk pretty rough. So he says, “Loretta, you are one stupid bitch. Like right now. You should see the stupid look on your face. I’ve never seen a stupider face.”

I don’t know what to say about this. I’m real hurt, I know. But for a long moment there’s just silence and there’s nothing inside me. Like the silence in the court when my hands have been going a hundred and seventy words a minute and it’s like they’ve been listening on their own and then they stop. Some woman is on the stand crying and keeping the sound down because it embarrasses her. I just sit and wait and I know she’s crying but I don’t even look up and I’m just empty. So I’m like that in front of Roy right after he says he’s never seen a stupider face than mine, and he’s waiting for me to tell him he’s right, I guess, and then I hit myself. My hand just flies up and punches me in the face. It’s the only logical thing, I guess. He won’t quite do it, so it’s up to me.

And all of a sudden I’m looking at Roy and he’s a little alarmed, but in addition to his face in my head is another sight. A blur of miniblinds and china hutch and then the ceiling and the pink oriental rug and the ceiling and the rug and the ceiling. And then both of these things are in me, both real, both clear as can be: the temples on Roy’s face throbbing and the little red light on the smoke detector flashing. My glass eye has flown out of my face and is lying on the rug about ten feet away and it’s staring at the ceiling and I’m seeing through it.

Roy says, “This is too goddamn much, Loretta. You did that on purpose.”

I close my eye — the one in my head — just to check this out and sure enough, I’m still looking at the ceiling. When I open my eye, Roy is gone. I hear his voice trailing out of the room. “Put your glass eye back in, Loretta. You disgust me.”

I’ve come to accept this thing about me, having a glass eye. It’s a very good one. A good match. So I’m not disgusted by this. I go over to where it’s lying on the rug and I look down. And I look up. At the same time. There’s my cornflower blue eye lying there on the pink rug and all I can say is that it looks astonished. Wide-eyed, I guess. And in my head is my face staring down, one more cornflower blue eye, and one sunken pucker waiting to be filled.