Perhaps this perennial discarding is merely the mind’s way of unencumbering itself in preparation for the difficult new work that lies ahead. That would certainly be the positive view. But being a less than positive person I can only grieve the valuable relationships that have been lost. Some days it feels as if I have lost everyone.
Spontaneous song erupted from me as I stood in front of the mirror and began removing the now-useless layers of skin. I was careful not to lose any of the pieces, allowing skin and drippings to gather in the steaming bowl.
“Oh onion, sweet onion, I love peeling onions!” I sang, as my imperfections dropped off, as inexactitudes curled away in my search for my perfect sweet heart.
I wasn’t even halfway done when I realized the face being uncovered was completely different from the face I had worn before. It wasn’t a better-looking face, especially in the initial stages of the reveal, but it was far more interesting.
“Harry! What have you done?” she asked from the doorway. And it struck me that her question was strangely similar to a distant whispered plea issuing from beneath my many layers. My beloved Janet stood in the doorway, her long, gray hair flowing and beautiful against her pale, shocked skin.
Many an evening I have sat in front of my fireplace thinking of the paths I have chosen in my life. Of course there is no fire in the fireplace, nor has there ever been—local ordinances deny us both the comfort and the drama of fire.
Movies and books and all such products of the imagination are terrible things for most people because they make them believe that they can be other than what they actually are. Terrible and beautiful things. People sit and wait for the transformation, which never comes, as if they might arise from their chairs or depart the theater as other people entirely. Instead all that is left to them is to gather their addictions around them and to sing their onion songs.
But I have been lucky enough to be born an onion in a long line of onions. Every day I stare into the mirror for yet another glimpse of the one I am becoming.
I understand none of this because, although I can glimpse the one underneath, my senses are so distracted by the layers still remaining that I have no idea what I am truly seeing.
When my wife is not whom I expected I begin to imagine that she is someone else.
Now and then I burst into spontaneous song and it is like praying.
Every day I find new language in my mouth. I spit it out but every night it returns. It creeps into my head and changes the landscape there.
Sometimes I call the people I once knew but have since forgotten and I tell them stories about who I imagined them to be.
Sometimes I whisper into the mirror the dreams I will be having tomorrow and the next day and the day after that.
And when I peel the onions I weep.
THE SADNESS
It creeps up on you out of the North, like some dark and suspicious groundwater, risen through the lost ruins of forgotten basements. When finally it takes form it is too tall, its folded hands too soft. It waits patiently beneath the dark trees: this malaise, this disappointment, this sadness.
You have waited for your family at the station for days. Their train has been delayed, you have been told it is the earthquakes in the Midwest, or the floods, or the wild fires. A storm has settled over the eastern seaboard and the birds do not know where to land.
Your youngest daughter cannot travel without nightmares. Your son cannot live long without the medicine a specialist provides. Your wife says she loves you but you are never sure. The waiting room is full of people who look at you with faces paled by fear.
At the edge of the platform a small boy tosses dead mice out onto the track as if seeding a sacrifice. Behind you the windows of the station have filled with weeping. Overhead the birds glide by in slow motion, still reluctant to land.
You make yourself smile and tell jokes to an old man with a cane. He taps it so rapidly against the planks you imagine some nervous disorder. Out on the platform a conductor collects tickets, tears them apart and tosses them out to join the mice. The wind blows several pieces back toward your face where they land and twitch. Gray moths, you think, as a number gather to make a beard across your chin.
All night long a distant train wails its distress but comes no closer. During the heat of the day the people who wait on the platform stretch out on the warm boards and sleep.
It is too late to be surprised, you think. It is too late to devise a backup plan. You have made so many mistakes, you think, when the sadness embraces you with its empty sleeves, an unspoken dread in the hollow of its mouth.
THE MESSENGER
Morgan staggered to the door half-asleep. Then he opened his eyes. Then he opened the door. The Western Union man was there.
Still dark outside; it was three o’clock in the morning.
“I’m… I’m really very sorry,” the messenger said, fumbling with the piece of paper in his hands. “I don’t know what brings me here. I…” He cleared his throat. “But I’ve really terrible news.”
Morgan frowned at the little man. “This must be difficult for you. But we all have our tasks to perform. You have your duty.”
The little man’s eyes darted about nervously. “But you don’t understand. We don’t deliver these by hand anymore. I don’t understand why I’m here. I’ve been behind a desk for years; I’m not even a messenger anymore!”
“You know, in the ancient world they put to death the bearers of bad tidings.” Morgan smiled grimly, then chuckled.
He let the messenger in. The man’s clothes were disheveled, his cap awry. Apparently in his rush to get dressed, the messenger had forgotten his tie.
Morgan clucked to himself softly. “Such a mess…”
The messenger was beginning to weep, wringing his hands, crumpling the paper, wiping his bald pate beneath the front edge of the uniform cap with trembling fingers.
“I’m really very sorry,” the messenger said.
“Oh, that’s quite all right. Have some tea? Perhaps some cake?”
“But I’m afraid I have quite bad news.”
“Well then, by all means, tell me. You have your duty, remember?”
The messenger cleared his throat. He looked small and vulnerable in his too-small cap and baggy, wrinkled uniform. He stared at the paper in his hands, as if for the first time, then back at Morgan. He lowered his eyes and began to read.
“Your wife and children have been killed in a fiery car crash.” He paused. “Wait… there must be some mistake. The rest of this… no responsible official…”
“Read me the message.” Morgan’s voice was firm.
“But, sir…”
“Read me the entire message. You have a job to do.”
The Western Union man read rapidly. “The bodies were burned almost beyond recognition. Their faces were fixed in expressions of… agony. Your little girl still clutched the charred remains of her doll.” He looked up. “I’m so sorry.”