Scott Cheshire - High as the Horses' Bridles

I hated the phrase.

We decided on a brief separation, a brief one, because the fighting became constant, about my moods, yes, but who doesn’t have moods? But mostly about not having kids.

One year later, in September, the planes came.

What I’m about to say is not an easy thing for me to say, and it’s the one and only real secret I’ve kept from Sarah, but when I first saw what was happening on the news, when the Big Shit buckled the fan and down came those poor toppling towers, for one brief dark moment in the basement of my soul I seriously thought the planes were proof. The prophet lives! I was only off by a year. Only one year, not so bad. I actually had this thought. Fleeting, yes, and fast like light, but that doesn’t matter now. Because I didn’t first think of their faces, and how every single one had a name, and I didn’t think of the purple carpet on the Trade Center lobby floor. I didn’t think of rubbing my shoe soles on the carpet when I was a kid, and shocking my dad’s arm in the elevator on the way up.

That afternoon of the eleventh, Sarah came by the house to pick up some of her stuff, and I was drinking. She’d have a drink with me, a quick one, she said. She turned on the television and we watched the news, and then we turned it off. We were both feeling so sad and were dutifully polite to one another. We didn’t really talk about anything. We just kept drinking. And then we fell on each other in the living room. She then hit me squarely in the face, and it hurt. I clearly heard the crack of her hand against my skin, and then the sound of her fingers tugging at the zipper on her jeans, even the shush of the silk ribbon line of her underwear just above her belt rubbing against the palm of my hand. I could’ve sworn I heard the blood rush all through my ears and my head, to my cheek where she hit me, thinking I could actually hear the skin going red. She hit me again. I grabbed at her wrists trying to stop her, and then thought better of it. She started hitting me in the chest like she was beating the steering wheel of a car that wouldn’t start. She was crying, too. I wasn’t, not yet, too overwhelmed by it all, by the pure and naked anger and the final remnants of our love and her frustration coming off her like sparks. Then she grabbed my face. I started to talk, and she said, “Shut up.” She undid all of my belt and pants and whatnot, and then she undid hers, pressing herself against me. Then my back was against the cold hard floor, and she beat herself against me, again, and again, and again, with her hands and her haunches, until I pushed her off because I was going to start. So she let that happen. And then she pressed herself against me again, and again, and again. The floor went warm, and she pressed herself against me until it was almost unpleasant, I think, for us both. I was in one particular place in the whole of the world, knowing where I was and when I was, and then she fell back sprawling on my legs.

We lay there on the hard floor, legs crossed on top of each other for what seemed like a very long time. The room was quiet. She wasn’t crying anymore. She patted my hand, because now, I think, I had started. She stood up and pulled on her jeans. She stuffed her underwear in her front pocket, and kicked mine within reach. She picked up a wadded sock from the floor and tossed it to me. I caught it. She allowed herself one more blurting cry, before stopping herself. Then she let out a cough of a laugh, and said, “That should not have happened.” I’m sure at least a small part of her meant the last few years.

And thus my dear (ex-)wife, mid-separation, got pregnant. We did not keep it. Which ruined us and remained forever between us like a deep furrow in the dirt, which neither of us could cross.

Dad called me later that day. He wanted to know what I thought about the planes. I was in shock, stunned by the footage, and didn’t have the appropriate language to express myself. I said something like, “I think it’s scary as hell and it looks like the world is coming apart on TV and maybe it’s symptomatic of a much bigger problem.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

I said, “I don’t know, maybe we want God too much.”

“We who?”

“People.”

“What people?”

“Forget it,” I said.

“Have you even seen the news?” he said. “You think this is really happening?”

I said, “I’m still processing. I can’t even look—”

“Well, your mother is sick. She’s sick again.”

“What?” I said. “Say that one more time.”

“Your mother.”

“You went to the hospital?”

“She’s been tired. We went six weeks ago.”

“You’ve known about this for six weeks?”

“I didn’t want to bother you.”

It’s very strange how it all works, how we get a handle on the darker things. “And you waited to tell me today. Something like this happens.”

He was quiet.

“It’s okay,” I said, “forget it.” I exhaled. Inhaled, exhaled. “At least I can process.”

“This is what I’m saying,” he said. “We can talk about it.”

“Is she in pain?”

“Some.”

“Same place?”

“Same place. And her liver. A little.”

“A little ?”

“That’s the word the doctor used. A little.”

“I’ll look into flights—”

“You’re not taking a plane.”

“Shit. Are they even flying planes?” I said.

“I don’t know.”

“Shit, shit, shit. Can I talk to her?”

“She doesn’t like the phone anymore. The radio waves, who knows…”

I didn’t respond.

“Josiah?”

“Yeah.” Biting my lip.

“You feel okay?”

“It’s a lot at once. Jesus. I can see Mom’s face, I swear, like she’s right here in front of me.”

“God is Giver of Tests. I’ve been saying this for years. We should not. Be here. I’ve been honing our worship.”

“I’ll tell Sarah about Mom. I’ll call you back, and see about a plane. The doctors said how bad?”

“I told Sarah. She thought you should know immediately.”

I held the phone away from me for a few moments, and then I put it back so I could hear.

“Josiah?” he said. “Your mother, she wants to go home, and her body knows it. But up here”—I pictured him pointing at his head—“she can’t see it.”

“Well, I don’t want Mom going home. Or anywhere, but staying right here.”

“You shouldn’t be way out there,” he said.

For Dad, the fact that Manifest Destiny had moved westward meant that back east is, was, and forever would be the only real deal, God’s One Manifest American Fingerprint. Everything after was blasphemy, half-ass imitation, poor and poorer servings of our Good Lord’s perfect recipe. And L.A. County was the red swollen cherry on a shameful sinful sundae. He never did visit me.

“I’ll look into flights,” I said. “And I’ll get there as soon as possible. No matter what it costs.” Money wasn’t a problem then. The paranoiac software bubble around Y2K had been actually good for business. But after the planes, business took an overwhelming nosedive. Plus the Internet. Amad told me we had to start embracing the Internet, and I was stupidly nonplussed. I got more depressed, and I convinced myself — which is not exactly true, is it, because it’s not like we ever formally sit down and convince ourselves of anything, but my behavior certainly did speak of something out loud — I realized something: I felt guilt! Guilty about the planes. Which were in no way my fault, of course, but still I was racked with a personal guilt, like it was me sitting in the cockpit, as if they were only responding to my polite request for Armageddon decades before, and I felt more guilty, cripplingly so, about that brief but utterly corrupt and fleeting sense of satisfaction with regard to their belated-by-a-year but successful arrival. God forgive me. I even felt guilty about Mom, like I was the one who made her sick. Why did it take such a long time for me to see how self-centered all this was? Why was this the kind of lesson I’d always learn and forget, learn and forget? I was also feeling guilty for being so selfish with Sarah, for not being man enough to own my own destiny. Have a child, Josie, and bring some new joy into this world.