Daniel Keohane: Margaret's Ark

The bedroom was dark, silent save for the rhythmic hum of the overhead fan. She looked at the clock on the side table. Ten thirty-five. A renewed wave of fear washed over her. If she'd fallen asleep, into such a vivid dream, it could only have been for a few minutes. The numbers of the clock switched to ten thirty-six.

59

She slowly worked the spatula under both eggs, slid it back out, then realized she'd forgotten to flip them over. When she did, the eggs sputtered anew in the butter. Margaret was tired.

The dream. Usually when she woke from a nightmare she could roll over and let it fade into insignificance. Not this one. It was as if David the Angel had been talking to her in person, in the real world, not letting her discard their meeting as a dream.

It was only a dream.

“Mom, is my egg ready?” Katie sat at the kitchen table, gently tapping her fork against the table.

Four-year-old Robin sat in the seat beside her, Mickey Mouse fork in her own hand and tapping it like her big sister. “Mom?” she said, as if Katie hadn't spoken, “Is my egg ready, yet?”

Margaret flipped one each onto their respective plates beside the toast and said, “Yes and yes.” She put the plates onto the table. “Now eat up. We have to leave for church in a half hour and you still have to get dressed.”

She dropped two more eggs into the pan for herself. Though Sunday offered some respite from the usual weekday crunch, the three of them had to scramble to make it to Mass on time, especially since Vince died. On school days, it was a race to get herself and the girl's dressed, drop Katie off next door at the Duddy's to wait for the bus and bring Robin to the early drop-off at the daycare which, thankfully, was housed in the elementary school. Being a full-time science teacher at the high school next door had its advantages. Margaret usually made it into class well before her first students arrived, a few spare minutes to organize lesson plans or last-minute grading. Today was Sunday. The only thing on the docket after church was Katie’s softball game at four o’clock. Time had lessened, at least for the girls, the pain these Sunday mornings brought to the family, Vince’s glaring absence between them in the pew. Katie still missed her dad, but her grief was concentrated in moments that gratefully showed themselves less and less, as life slowly filled in the gaps. Robin played along, but Margaret wondered how much of it was simple imitation of her sister. She’d been only two when it had happened. A year and a half was a long span for a girl that age.

She flipped the eggs onto her own plate and sat at the table across from the girls. When she a child, the Catholic rule of not eating an hour before Communion was still in effect, at least in her house. Whether that regulation had ever been lifted, or modified to apply only to swimming she didn’t know. Margaret never took it seriously in her adult life. Robin squirmed enough in the pews without being hungry on top of it.

“Eat up,” she said, noticing Katie's attention pulled further into the Sunday comics and away from her cooling breakfast.

* * *

Jack used to have a last name, Rory, or Lowry - something like that. Like everything else that came before , he could never be certain. That life had been taken away, ripped from his arms, replaced with this new existence of mental fog and occasional blades of pain. Not physical pain, though his stomach did have moments when it felt as if a hole opened inside him when he didn’t eat enough. The blades were memory, flashes of remembrance. They hurt to look at, like staring too long into the sun.

Jack lay sideways on the cot. The pillow was so thin he had to curl his arm beneath it for support. The wall in front of him was blemished – stains and spit and other unnamable excretions Rick and his people – including Jack when his shift came around – worked unceasingly to erase but which had an existence beyond anything manageable, like memory, coming back again and again in spite of the scrubbing.

He’d had a thought a moment ago, but it had flittered away like a kite loosed in the wind. Jack lay still, reaching mentally for the string and trying hard to hold it. Something about God. The face of God. The face of an angel.

The angel in his dream. Faceless, glowing with light. Telling him something important. A message from God Himself, maybe. He stared at the wall, not seeing it, letting images race past like on a movie screen. Water. Ocean. No, not quite. A lot of water, though. Floods. The Flood? Like Noah.

He was close, but the kite kept spinning out of reach. Jack laid his hand on a clean spot on the wall, hoping to grab it. The motion only served to bring him further into the waking world. It was lost.

After a time, he rolled over and swung his legs off the bed. His blanket was bunched on the floor again. It never stayed on him very long when he slept. He reached down, saw significance in its curves and folds. Angel , he remembered again. Telling him something important. He wished he could remember. God is in the details , someone told him long ago, in that other life. A life which Jack understood with a rare bit of clarity he could never get back. He was too lost. Everyone was. That was the point of the dream. Everyone lost, doomed to.... something or other.

The second floor was partitioned into two small rooms, one for men, one for women. His area was abuzz with the waking sounds of the night’s residents. Few people spoke, at least to each other. Grumblings, coughing out last night’s nicotine. One man in the far corner heaved and vomited behind his cot. Didn’t have a good night, that guy , he thought. These sounds served as morning’s wake-up call along with the smell and plate-clanking of breakfast downstairs. He followed a group of a half dozen men already merging with a larger group of women and young children in the outside hall. It was dark here, thick with body smells, lit by morning light through a window over the stairwell and a single, dust-caked bulb.

Jack kept his gaze down, not wanting to be drawn into conversation. He had trouble keeping the threads of his life together, and things got worse when someone made him focus on whatever struck them as interesting. There was a second set of feet descending the steps beside him. Jeans, clean sneakers, a scarred black hand.

“Sleep well?” the man asked. Jack looked up, ready to look away again if the other tried to make eye contact. It was a young face, midnight black and mapped with scars of some long-ago battle. Probably some accident, or a bad fight. He looked familiar, and seemed to know Jack enough to keep his gaze directed away, to the back of a bald man’s head in front of them. They stepped onto the ground floor landing where their procession joined the already-long line queued up for breakfast.

“OK, I guess,” Jack finally said.

The young man nodded.

The bald guy turned around. His fleshy face folded in on itself, half-confused, half-irritated. He said, “You talking to me, Mister?”

Jack shook his head, tilted his head to the right. “To my friend, here.”

The fleshy head turned to... Michael , Jack remembered. The kid’s name is Michael... and snorted. Jack couldn’t tell what the sound meant, but was glad that the head turned back around and the man stepped up to close the gap in the line.

Jack blinked. Was he supposed to have gotten up early today for table duty? Maybe it was tomorrow. Rick would have come up to get him if it was today. The center’s director was serving and chatting with the guests, his gray beard glistening in the steam rising from the metal food trays. Rick would let him know if it was his turn. Jack was hungry. He was pretty sure he’d eaten supper last night. Short term memory problems, someone explained once. Might have been Rick, or some doctor. Problems “retaining information” since...