Tiffany McDaniel - The Summer That Melted Everything

He was wearing tennis shoes that instead of having solid rubber bottoms, had lotion bottles affixed. Every step he took squeezed some of that lotion out.

When I asked him why, he said, “To soften the scar.”

“What scar?” I asked.

“Why, my scar.” He turned and I saw his left arm was gone. It was then I realized we were standing on it. Either we’d shrunk or his arm had enlarged, either way his suicide gash had scarred and it made for a squishy, pink road beneath us.

He jumped up and down, high in the air like the scar had the springs of a trampoline. The lotion shot out from the bottles and onto the scar as he said, “Maybe if I soften the scar enough, it’ll just go away, then God won’t have proof I done somethin’ bad. Won’t you help me soften the scar? Make it go away, little man?”

“How?”

He pointed behind me. I turned and saw a vending machine full of the lotion tennis shoes. I went to the machine and with a deposit of my blood, got a pair of the shoes out. I slipped them on and started walking. Grand was ahead of me. By the time I caught up to him, I tried to stay by his side but the walk was full of turnstiles and there wasn’t one with room for the both of us.

Our lotion shoes started flattening. We were running out of lotion. We tried to go back to the vending machine but the turnstiles wouldn’t turn the opposite way. There would be no going back.

“What’ll we do now, Grand?” Even in dreams, voices tremble.

He looked at me and I wished he wasn’t crying.

“покаяться, little man.”

Upon waking, I couldn’t get to the Russian dictionary fast enough to look that word up and its meaning:

Repent.

We had Grand’s funeral at the house, holding it in Russia, which was the living room and large enough to allow space for the great grow of mourners. Neither Elohim nor his followers attended.

His onetime follower Yellch was there. He didn’t cry, but his eyes were red and swatted as eyes tend to be at the end of wet work. In his squeezing hand was the end of a tissue. So many ends. He was like an end himself. Quiet. Still. Tired and trying to bend back to the beginning to fix a different end. One where his onetime savior and best friend didn’t end up in a coffin.

A coffin that wasn’t your usual. It was a decision Mom made when she was unable to sit still and found herself dusting and polishing the grandfather clock. She removed its pendulum and clockworks to make room for Grand’s body. The clock didn’t look that different from a coffin. Both wood, both long and square. The only unsettling thing was how Grand’s face showed through the glass where the clock’s dial once did.

They dressed Grand in a dark blue suit, a three-piece like Dad’s. I worried Dad would attend the funeral in the same T-shirt and pajamas he’d been wearing for days. Maybe if it were left to him he would’ve, but Mom yanked the T-shirt and pajamas off and pushed him toward the shower, the razor, the toothpaste by the sink.

Though showered, shaved, and suited, Dad did not look like Dad as he placed Grand’s baseball cards and glove in the coffin. I made Grand a new Eddie Plank card for the one I’d lost by cutting a small square out of the flap of a cardboard box. Then I drew Eddie on it, even put his statistics on the back. Sal drew Eddie’s eyes. I’ve never been able to do the eyes.

Mom tucked a New York Times under Grand’s arm so he’d have something to read while waiting in line to have his soul weighed. I didn’t have it in my heart to tell her or Dad about Ryker and all the sorry that went with him. I’d let them have the son they thought they did. In that thinking, Grand became the son who hadn’t committed suicide. He had simply died. That would be how they would answer for his death in the future if anyone should ask.

“Is Fielding your only child?”

“Oh, no, we had another son. His name was Grand. But he died.”

“I’m so sorry. How did he die?”

“One night in the woods, he just died.”

“Oh, I see.”

I often wondered if they ever discussed it between themselves. They never did with me. Never asked me why I thought he did it. Had they even asked themselves? In the silence, and in the dark, ask themselves why their son would make such a choice?

I think Dad almost asked me once.

It was long after Breathed, and we were sitting on the porch of their house in Pennsylvania. Him on the porch swing, me on the steps. He was looking at me.

When I turned to face him, he said, “Grand was a fine boy.”

“Yes, he was.”

“Do you know…?”

“Do I know what, Dad?”

He recrossed his legs and picked up the paper by his side. “Do you know if that fella, the one Grand knew…”

“Ryker?”

“Was that his name?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know if he still works at The New York Times? ”

“Ryker died, Dad.”

“He did?”

I nodded my head. “He died in ’85.”

“Oh.” He shook the paper out in front of him. “Grand would’ve been a fine journalist. Don’t you think?”

“If he wanted to be.”

“He would’ve been a fine baseball player.”

“If he wanted to be.”

“He would’ve been a fine husband and father.”

“Only if he wanted to be.”

“Well, what is it he wanted to be?” Dad hastily folded the paper and smacked it down.

“I’m sorry, Dad. I didn’t mean to make you angry.”

I got up to leave.

“Fielding? Wait. Do you know…?”

“Know what, Dad?”

It was on the tip of his tongue. That question of why Grand had killed himself. Would I have answered it had he asked me? No. My father was too rid of any muscle by then. He was an old man and he wouldn’t have been strong enough to withstand the tragedy that was his son’s life. Maybe he saw this in my eyes, that I wouldn’t tell him the truth. Maybe that was why he said never mind and looked out over the marigolds growing in the nearby flowerpot.

What was he thinking of? Was it how he screwed in handles along the side of the clock so there’d be something for the pallbearers to hold onto? Dad was a pallbearer, as was I. Grand’s body wasn’t heavy but his death was, and sometimes I thought I’d have to let go of the handle because the burden was just too much.

It was like trying to lift something pouring in a river wideness and spilling out farther than my hands would ever be able to catch. A deep, torrential pouring that swore to drown me in a limitless sinking. Just when I thought my hand was going to break under the strain, we lifted the coffin into the back of the hearse and I could breathe, not freely but enough to live.

As we were preparing to take the short drive to the cemetery, Mom tugged Dad’s sleeve to tell him she wouldn’t be going with us.

“Why, Mom? Is it because you’re afraid to go outside again?”

“I’m not afraid. Today I choose to stay.”

“Why?” Dad asked, but I don’t think he really cared. He was too busy looking at his son’s coffin in the back of the hearse.

She grabbed his hands in hers and patiently held them until he finally turned from the hearse to her.

“Autopsy, my love. When you get home, you’ll say to me, ‘Honey, the funniest thing happened on the way to the cemetery.’ And I’ll ask, ‘What happened, my love?’ And you’ll say the door of the clock suddenly opened and Grand jumped out. Said he was never really dead at all, just pretendin’.

“Then he’ll run away. Run right away. And I’ll ask you, but where’d he run away to? And you’ll answer, where all clocks go. The place where time never runs out, the place of beautiful eternity.”