Michael Thomas - Man Gone Down

We keep moving, tracking residue — trace elements floating in the void. So real, assumed, or imagined, it is still there — the latter, perhaps, most important because it burns more brightly there — and that, I know, is real, consuming, sacred — wholly different from the burn of shame. And it leads me to other things I can really touch: my few friends, here and gone, my children, and my wife. It’s what led her to me — she is that star, its end and its beginning. Its final breath, recollected, reformed. I can touch her face, trace its soft line, hold it in my hand and feel her pulse in her temples. And I don’t care what it represents. My Claire. And unsung or not, I made a promise that “I will be true . .” I love my wife. What else can I do? There’s a break — no lights — then a bright flash from an overpass. Then it’s dark again. And the bus stays dark, rolling through the dark, but it remains, a small feeling, not desperate, not bold, but present in a place I pray I never lose. And it hasn’t anything to do with anyone other than me — here and now. I’m coming back, or closer, I’m coming. I’m coming because I’m in love. Now I see her: the dark horizon, like a long, crooked mouth and the last rosy glow from off in the west. There’s a flash of the highway lights across the bus, then another. The road ascends as we enter Providence.

We pull off 95 and stop on the west side of the station. The old woman stays in her seat, gives me another hurting look, and closes her eyes. “Not yet for me,” she mumbles. I take my bag and limp and creak down the aisle and steps.

The air outside seems warmer and muggy — strange for these parts to have more heat than New York City. I turn south — no Claire. I stand there a moment while the other passengers take their bags from the storage compartments underneath. I realize that this area’s only for buses, so I follow behind the others to the adjacent side, which faces the parking lot. Two get in waiting cabs, another in a car, and the last starts diagonally across the big lot. I think about him disappearing beyond the guardrail and cattails and the unlit road.

I don’t see the Benz anywhere. It’s not like Claire to be late. I get hit with a wave of panic as soon as I think that and then a streak of dread in the form of a bilious razor on my liver. I shake it off and try to focus on where she might be along the road — not why — just how the car moves down the highway, wide and squat with those white-blue halogen beams leading it on. But I don’t get close enough to see inside or far enough away to be able to tell if it isn’t just the same short stretch of road again and again.

Ten minutes pass, then more, with me standing there, watching the cars on the highway and access road, watching the headlights coming out of the black of the approach to the parking lot. Nothing. I put my bag down and feel my face with my hands, imagine her there, looking at me. And we both know what she sees. And I look for her again, this time in the night sky. I’ve heard that in the constellation of Orion smaller suns are sometimes moved by the enormous forces of a giant one, and that what looks like a tail of light to us is really the beginnings of new planets. This sun is all the way down. So I call to her, “Godspeed.” What else can I say?

Headlights sweep off the road and semicircle around the outer loop of the lot with a dark form behind — like a comet moving backward. She pulls up to the curb, leaves the car running, and opens the big door slowly. She lifts herself out gracefully and leans against the car, not moving, just looking at me, blankly, her eyes only half open. Waiting. Finally, I step forward, and then she does, too. She opens her eyes wide and reaches for my face with both hands.

“There’s my husband,” she whispers. My Claire, a long crooked nose now to match. She turns her head to the side and pushes it into my chest. I hold her. The world seems to rock around our stillness.

My stomach rumbles. She puts her hands on my sides.

“You’re skinny.”

“I’m all right.”

“Did you sleep?”

“A little bit.”

She kisses my chest, inhaling as she does. “You smell good.”

“No,” I mumble.

“Yes. To me.”

I softly trace the line of her nose. She leans away.

“No, I’m hideous.”

I go to kiss it. She winces, but lets me.

She turns to the idling car. “They were just dropping off.” I look in the window — the stillness. She leans back, lets go of my waist, lets her hands slip down my arms, and lets me catch her.

“Can you drive?” she whispers.

I nod. She squeezes my wrists, and we get in the car.

I move the seat back as far as it will go and stretch. I lay my hands on my thighs: They throb into each other. I shake my head once quickly to make sure I’m awake and then nod — more like a forward pulse of my body — to assure myself that I can do this. Then I just stare out the windshield into the night.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.”

She puts her hand on mine. I turn to her, but she’s looking into the back. She whispers, “Someone’s happy to see you.” I turn. There’s my girl in her car seat pointing at me — softly bended arm.

“Dada,” she whispers, honoring the silence. I blow her a kiss. She smiles, puckers, and those deep brown eyes are glowing — beyond me. I shut the heavy door as softly as I can, then look back at them again. They’re still there. Claire squeezes my hand. There’s strength in it. C sleep-talks something quietly, and X moves slightly as if to respond. There’s all their breath in the quiet, my wife’s hand on mine. I start to face forward, but I turn back, take one last look at my own: the boys, I hope, dreaming in their own hue and time and my girl in the fading light; the little, changing face of love.

There are many people, friends, and family I must thank:

My patient agent, Eileen Cope.

Everyone at Grove/Atlantic, Inc., especially Deb Seager and the great and loyal Dara Hyde, (you were right about Youk), Michael Hornburg, and Morgan Entrekin.

Elisabeth Schmitz, my editor: Thank you for your faith, your time, and grace.

Al and Judy Maeda, Samareh Eskandaripour, Sarah Morse, Glen Mazara, George (Joga Bonito) Sanchez, Emily Stone, David Levinson, Britt Dean, Lindly, Al and Julie Boegehold, John Milkey, Daphne Klein, Cathy Fuerst, Craig Townsend, Rebecca and Michael Bruno, Gabe and Marty, Cecil, Elizabeth Gaffney, Brigid Hughes, Emily Frankovich, Sandy McLean, Keli Garrett, Martha Southgate, Robert Sullivan, Van Jordan, Jim Collier, Kim Wiley, Colin Erickson, Carol Wood, Charles and Dorthea Bowen, Jane Morse, The Newsome Family, The Nestor Family, Brooklyn Patriots FC.

Thank you Caroline and Leslie Marshall and Clay Miller for your generosity.

Uncle Russell and Aunt Pauline, Lisa and Russell Houston, all of the Fowlkes and Allens, Pauline Sweet, Seddon Ryan Wylde, John Wylde.

Mentors: Frank Kirkland, Elizabeth Beaujour, Eleanor (my Virgil) Wilner, Chuck Wachtel, David Haynes, Peter Turchi, David Winn, Dexter Jeffries, Barbra Webb, Bill Root, George Willauer. Protégées: Eliana Kissner, Mohammed Saleem, Shokry Elady.

Teri Rosen — of course you are a part. Jennifer McMahon, Eisa Ulen-Richardson, Stephen Wetta, Ira Elliott, Tony Mancus, Mark Bobrow, Thom Taylor, Margret Laino, and all the good folk in HW1238.

Where are you?: Leslie Williams, Will Gardiner, Herbie Dade, Kieran Murphy, Hal Herring.

Those remembered: Margret Owens, Cecil Irton Wylde, Cecil C. I. Wylde, Joan Thomas, John Potter, David M. Thomas Jr. — my father.

Charles Beatty Medina— Gracias: you helped build my home.